


The Long Way Home

by An_Exceptional_Liar



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Adventure & Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 56,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1911738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Exceptional_Liar/pseuds/An_Exceptional_Liar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After destroying the Reapers and helping the galaxy get back on its feet, Commander Shepard quietly retreats into hiding. Six years later political complications sends a team of spectres on an investigation to find the greatest peacemaker of their age. Helping lead the team is Garrus Vakarian, now a Council spectre himself. When the two meet again they tumble down a long tunnel of intrigue, their friendship evolving in ways that surprise them both.</p><p>Future ShepardxGarrus, past ShepardxThane</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of these characters or the wold and culture they inhabit. 
> 
> I will try to update this at least once a week, although it is a continual work in progress. With that said, I apologize for any typos or grammatical errors--I do my best editing but there's always a few things I miss. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

**-000- Prologue (Two Years in the Future) -000-**

It was the sound of bare feet treading on the floor, faint but distinct, that woke him up. His eyelids cracked and light seeped in. A blurry figure moved out of sight and he pushed himself up from the bed with one elbow to see. Her hair hung nearly to her waist now. As he watched it swing, catching red and orange highlights in the sun, she reached back and wound it around her hands, curling it into a knot. With her hair fixed he could see the entire length of her naked back, which was long and languorous. Its peach expanse was broken here and there with swathes of freckles and shiny lines of scar tissue, one following the length of her spine up to her neck.

Jane turned, catching him stare, and smiled. “Good morning. I was trying to get a shower in before you woke up.” She walked back over and sat on the edge of the bed, “I was thinking about getting some breakfast too. I’d like to get out and walk around.”

Garrus sat up, pushing away the bedsheets, “I know a good place. You’ll like it, it’s in a cramped alleyway on the ass-end of the wards and I’m pretty sure the owner’s got a black market operation going on in the back.”

“Those hole-in-the-wall restaurants have the best food.” She nudged his shoulder, “I bet you slummed places like that all the time while you were working for C-Sec. Great way to meet informants.”

“Sometimes I wonder what sort of trouble we could have got up to if you’d been in the academy with me.”

“Too much trouble, I have no doubt, Officer Vakarian.” Her eyes were green sparks of laughter and he put his hand over hers without thinking. She looked down at their entwined fingers and her smile softened, “I don’t know. I like this. I feel like we grew into each other.”

Garrus pressed his forehead into her shoulder, “Maybe. I still feel like a fool.”

“Why?” She brought his hand up to her chest, he felt the quiet thump of her heart warm his palm.

“Because you’re my best friend. It should have been obvious--us, together, I mean.”

Jane put her lips to his knuckles, “It was worth the wait.”

“Maybe. I guess I never thought I'd be a xenophile pervert with a human fetish.” Her head flung back with laughter and he held his hands up as her fist swung.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

When Garrus entered the salarian councilor’s office he had not expected to find two other spectres in the room. The message from the councilor arrived only a few hours prior and, as he slid into a chair adjacent to the galaxy’s second human spectre, Captain Kaidan Alenko, he began to notice a few unusual additions to the councilor’s office. Lorn Vilus blinked at him as he sat down and bowed her head from behind a glass desk, the cloth hood swathing her scaly face rippled. “Vakarian.”

  
“Councilor.” Garrus nodded back; he turned and raised his brow plates at Kaidan who shrugged. His gaze began to wander after a drone assistant buzzing around the room.  
Well-hidden as various pieces of modern art and decoration, the office was packed with technology. There was a hum in the air as dozens of machines ran together. It took him another moment to pick out what exactly most of that power was being used for but a small device on the salarian’s desk tipped him off: it was a tech dampener. A very impressive one, if his guess was right. Something powerful enough to de-power weapons, omni-tools, bugs, maybe shields. His eyes narrowed on the councilor who looked quite calm surrounded by the small fortress she’d erected in her office.

  
She began to speak, “Firstly, thank you all for arriving quickly. I have my reasons for giving you so little notice, but those explanations can wait. I realize it is unusual for a spectre to work with another on a typical assignment, even more unusual for three to do it. But I am entrusting you with a mission of high priority, one I acknowledge may take a great deal of time and effort to accomplish. That said, I expect results but I do not expect _immediate_ results.”

  
Lorn Vilus folded her hands and set them primly in her lap. “There are current events coming to a head which have not reached crisis levels but are alarming nonetheless. They require certain precautions.” She was the newest member of the Council; the salarian representative had so far proven to be twice as canny as her predecessor and three times as pragmatic. A controversial choice considering her openly pro-krogan views, she was exactly the sort of politician Garrus liked. She leveled her large, clouded gray eyes at the three spectres. He watched her picking them apart as her flat lips twitched once.

  
After a breath of silence Lorn began again, “Two of you are here because, in addition to being competent agents of the Council, you are personally invested in this mission. How, I’m sure you can guess. The third is here because your tracking skills are renowned.” She paused, picking up a decorative crystal dodecahedron sitting on her desk beside a family photo, turning it over in her slender hands.

Garrus glanced at Kaidan as he spoke, “Councilor, since Alenko and I aren’t famous for our tracking abilities I have to assume you’re talking about Novani.” Moraina Novani inclined her head toward him, grinning faintly. She was an asari who survived the Reaper Wars. She’d been serving the Council for centuries and was one of a handful of spectres to escape with her life after the invasion. Most of Garrus and Alenko’s current colleagues had either been appointed to their posts during the war or after; the rest died serving the Council. “That means the two of us,” he jerked his head at Alenko, “were called because you believe we are personally invested in this.”

“Correct.” Lorn nodded, her eyes meeting his as she set her crystal back down.

  
“This has something to do with Shepard.” Garrus leaned forward, “You’re trying to find her again.” Kaidan sighed, loudly, and turned his face to the ceiling; his eyes were shut tight and his features wrinkled with irritation.

“Correct again, Vakarian. Admiral Shepard never officially resigned from her position as a spectre and is, technically, still under the employ of the Council. Now, I realize previous investigations regarding her disappearance have been conducted, but after reviewing their reports I was unsatisfied. I have brought this to the attention of my peers and found Councilors Vasquez and Urdnot to be very interested in bringing our wayward agent home. Councilors T’Laikos, Bar Ven, and Minas are less enthusiastic; so you see we are split on the matter--making it all the more delicate of an issue to handle.”

“What about Councilor Raan?” Moraina asked, crossing her legs.

Lorn snorted, “The quarian Councilor has withdrawn to Rannoch. Apparently there is some new dispute on their homeworld which she, as an admiral, must attend to. She will not be able to weigh in on this issue until it is resolved.” Lorn toyed with an edge of her crystal, running the tip of her finger along its line. “So, as I have at least fifty percent approval--and very likely more considering Councilor Raan’s history with Admiral Shepard--I am moving ahead on this project.”

“Without their knowledge?” Kaidan shook his head, “Are we legally allowed to do this?”

“They know very well what I am doing, Captain. And since I am funding this in part out of my own pocket, with the help of my more supportive peers and a few other interested parties, they are not objecting.”

“But why try to bring back Shepard now?” Moraina peered at the councilor, “What exactly is she supposed to do about deteriorating political ties and terrorist attacks? You have us to do that work, not a woman who’s been out of action for years. We have no confirmation she’s even alive anymore. Isn’t there speculation she killed herself?”

“Shepard isn’t dead.” Garrus grunted, “She’s just so well hidden there’s not much hope finding her. She’s had a long history of underworld connections, and when she decided to vanish she cashed in all her chips with them. The trail’s been cold for a long time, Councilor. We’re going to need more than a little of your patience.”

“Did her 'underworld connections' include Aria T'loak? I've heard a few things that could curl your fringe." Moraina’s face was bright as she leaned forward with a grin. Garrus gave a noncommittal shrug that made her eyes widen. "Goddess.” Moraina leaned back in her chair as she pondered the ceiling. “But cold trails or not I’ll find her. This will be a good hunt.”

Kaidan was shaking his head, “We shouldn’t be doing this. She walked away because she’d done enough for the galaxy already. She deserves her peace.”

“You still don’t trust her.” Garrus glowered, Kaidan’s head jerked toward him and he glared back. “If there's a day when Jane Shepard doesn't give a damn about her stake in the galaxy I’ll marry a krogan.”

“This isn't about trust--”

“Bullshit, Alenko,” Moraina’s mouth drew back in a sneer, “you won’t even bring her name up in conversation and you haven’t seen the woman in a decade. But I’m sure Councilor Vilus will find a replacement for you, if this mission is really so disagreeable.”

“Not your place to make that judgement, Novani.” Kaidan’s voice was ice as he hunched over his knees, both hands balling into fists. “And I will carry out this mission to my fullest abilities if the Counselor believes I’m the man for the job.”

“I do, and I am fully confident of my trust in each of you." She turned her head from Kaidan to Novani, a stern frown crinkling her forehead. “The galaxy is in a state of anticipation, we may not be at war but it is skulking in the corners of everyone’s mind. I need a leader--the Citadel needs a leader. We need someone with a reputation for action and goodwill and competence. The biggest mistake this Council made was letting the admiral get away before making her one of our own. I regret that there has never been a Councilor Shepard. Perhaps someday we will be able to rectify that. For now I will be satisfied with having her safeguard the peace once more, should the three of you be able to locate her.” Lorn leaned over her desk, “All I require from you are periodic progress reports. I will disburse necessary funding as you see fit.” She lifted her eyes, “The rest I entrust to you; I have great expectations of your success.”

  
“Spectres aren’t allowed the luxury of failure.” Moraina smiled as she stood from her chair, stretching her arms to the ceiling as her muscled back contorted. “I will find the admiral, and Vakarian and Alenko will wrangle her back to the Citadel.” She turned to Kaidan and Garrus, eyes half-lidded as she spoke, “Let me finish up any current business so we can coordinate the mission.” She turned back to Lorn and nodded, “I’ll begin immediately.”

  
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Novani. But I have one last request: I want as little of this recorded as possible. You will avoid keeping notes, interviews, messages, anything that can be hacked or stolen easily. I realize it will be difficult keeping track of your work, but there are alternative methods you can turn to. Discuss this little or not at all outside of each other’s company--and remember that there are always hidden ears and eyes wherever you go. In fact, outside of this room I don’t want to hear the name Jane Shepard pass your lips.” Lorn waved away her drone assistant while it pinged a message at her. “I am setting up a secure channel for you to contact me through. It is to be used for your reports and, in extreme circumstances, emergency communication. Is this understood?”

  
“I’ve done blackout work before, Councilor. You would know.” Moraina grinned, crossing her arms across the round swell of her chest. She’d already moved to the door and beckoned to Garrus and Kaidan.

  
“This isn't going to be like your work with the STG, Novani.” Garrus rose from his chair, “Which isn't as secret as you’d like to think,” her mouth gaped. “Shepard’s friends are numerous and powerful. A few of them have invested substantial effort and resources to keep her hidden.”

  
Kaidan’s expression thundered as he joined Garrus and Moraina at the door, the three of them inclined their heads to Councilor Lorn as they left the room. “Arrogance isn't going to help either,” he growled, “Garrus is right: treating this like a typical mission is useless. We’re going to be hitting a lot of walls.” His fists were balled and his legs snapped in jerky steps, “If we make any headway on the mission in the first month I’ll eat my boots.”

  
“Vilus didn't assign me to work alone, Alenko. Were you listening when she mentioned specifically choosing you and Vakarian for your personal connections? We may hit some walls but at least with the two of you guiding me I’ll be hitting the right ones. From there it’s a matter of piecing together a timeline. Tracking down a mark is a logical task, linear in its simplicity once the right clues are assembled. It may be that the admiral has loyal and influential friends but their henchmen, the toadies who do the legwork, those are the ones who will give us answers.”

  
“Then let me give you my first bit of advice, Novani.” Garrus interjected as they strode into the Embassy atrium, past the restored Citadel gardens and fountains of the Tower. He lowered his voice as a volus and human woman strode by in deep conversation, “The Shadow Broker owed our target a favor from a few messes she helped clean up while still a commander for the Alliance. The Broker is my safest guess on who fixed up her new life--whatever and wherever that is.”

  
“I’d heard rumors about the admiral and Broker too. She must have been an extraordinarily charming woman. Or perhaps a particularly ruthless one.” Moraina drew a hand up to her face, stroking her chin with one thumb, eyes bright with ideas. “I wish I could say the two of us were acquainted, but I was never given the opportunity to shake hands with the woman who single-handedly won the war.”

  
“If you ever meet her don’t phrase it like that.” Garrus snorted, his mandibles clicking as he shook his head. The trio began to move again, down the flight of stairs he’d once fought a contingent of geth on.

  
“Did fame make her uncomfortable?” Moraina’s face puckered, “I was always impressed with how she handled interviews.”

  
Garrus shook his head again, “She doesn't like remembering she had to fight in a war where the casualty rates were about eighty percent,” he answered at last. Kaidan’s eyes turned to him and they watched each other in knowing silence. Garrus nodded at his old shipmate once and Kaidan glowered at Moraina, who was now several steps ahead of them, shaking his head slightly. “Meet me tomorrow at the usual place,“ Garrus murmured, “we can discuss our collaboration with Novani.” Alenko raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.

Moraina turned her head and they snapped to attention, “I’ll be calling the both of you later. If you have the time to shore up any leads you can think of I’d appreciate it. I’m going to look into the reports filed by the previous teams. I don’t expect much, but it will be informative.”

  
“We’ll start calling our contacts, old friends, everyone we can.” Garrus nodded, “We need to be careful though, if the Broker hears we’re investigating they’ll close ranks.”

  
“Not sure we’ll be able to avoid that.” Kaidan gave him a sideways glance, his mouth twisting, “Best we can do is keep it quiet for as long as possible.”

  
Moraina gave them a good stare, “The way you talk sounds like the admiral knows the Broker personally. Was she an agent? _Is_ she an agent?”

“No.” Garrus’ mandibles twitched, “Whatever she did for the Broker wasn't something I was privy to. It was more like they traded favors, and she must have done one favor the Broker’s never forgotten. What it is, I don’t know. But it was big--maybe she saved their life during the invasions, who knows.” Despite the half dozen people who knew the Shadow Broker’s identity, Liara T’Soni made an effective master of secrets. She’d rebuilt after the war, expanded her operations even. It was years since Garrus had spoken directly to her; from what he heard Liara had vanished into the labyrinthine task of repairing her empire and had not emerged since. Every so often he’d get a call, asking after his health or work but she was predictably cagey about her own affairs.

He didn’t bother asking about Shepard, he’d given up on trying to break down the wall of silence she’d built between their old commander and the entire galaxy. He missed Shepard these long years past; Liara delivered letters and sometimes gifts to the former Normandy crew every year from Jane. The messages were heavily redacted by Liara herself. It made him angry, at first, but she insisted that Shepard wanted absolute privacy, and he was willing to respect her.

“Here’s my ride, I’ll see the both of you later.” Garrus dipped his head at Moraina and Kaidan as he stopped at his vehicle and slipped inside the driver’s seat. Kaidan waved once as it took off and Novani raised her hand, lips drawn thin as he flew away. In the privacy of his car Garrus exhaled, groaning as he rested a hand against his forehead. This business with the salarian councilor bothered him, but his immediate worry was Kaidan Alenko’s involvement.

Kaidan’s life since Shepard’s disappearance had teetered between happiness and disaster year by year. Jane confided in Garrus once that she’d rekindled her relationship with Kaidan in the last few months before the Crucible’s activation. Her sharp eyes, clouded with stress, floated into his memory.

 

* * *

**-000- About Nine Years Ago -000-**

“I don’t know if I’m making the right decision.” Jane was staring out the window, her expression motionless, thumbs rubbing circles into the wineglass she held. They met in the lounge during off hours when the rest of the crew was sleeping or at work. He’d bring random bottles of human spirits and she’d find whatever turian or quarian alcohol that could be scrounged up, then they’d trade drinks and talk.

“I care about him, I've always cared about him. I never stopped being in love with Kaidan until I met Thane.” Jane tipped the glass against her lips, taking a tiny sip. She rolled the wine around her tongue and swallowed, still not looking away from the window. “Maybe in the back of my mind I knew we’d find each other again, maybe when I was with Thane I knew it wouldn't last long.” She laughed, a hollow cough, “How could it last long? He had a terminal illness and I still--I don’t know. I feel like part of me thought something would work out, somehow, like it always does.” Jane shrugged, and Garrus could see the moisture in her eyes.

“But I was arrested and all those months passed,” her chin sunk to her chest. “And when I saw him again in Huerta Memorial--God, he was so weak. It was like I’d died again; we lost so much time together. Then Cerberus showed up on the Citadel.” He saw her throat constrict, she swallowed several times before continuing. “I haven’t had time to process it. I wouldn't have moved on so quickly but Kaidan--I almost lost him too, so many times.” Her eyes, still cloudy, rolled over to him. “You were going to shoot him, weren't you? When we were on that balcony, with Udina and the Council.”

Garrus lifted his bottle, an expensive brandy Shepard picked up from one of the shady vendors in the refugee camps she loved to frequent. He took a swig and set it back down on the bar, “Of course I would have shot him. Not a kill shot, but still, he had his pistol leveled at your head. Hell, I was ready to shoot Wrex that time on Virmire. Ashley too,” he shook his head, “you didn't know but we talked when you went over to cool him off. It didn't come to that, and Wrex and I were friends, but I wasn't going to hesitate. Not when it was your life, never when it’s your life.”

Jane laughed, this time with real mirth, “I’m sort of pissed to hear that but I’m happy too.” She leaned over on her barstool and rested her head on his shoulder. “A girl only meets a friend like you once in a lifetime.” He kept still, letting her relax until she straightened and swiveled back around to stare into the stars. “I've had a lot of friends, Garrus Vakarian. But I think you’re my one and only best friend.”

“Shepard,” he angled his head at her, “are you going to be all right? I’ll boot him back off the ship if you want.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” She turned and set her elbows on the bar, resting her chin against one hand. She smiled, a small but bright flashing of teeth that pierced his stomach. “I want to work something out with him, maybe it won’t come to anything. But if it does we might be happy. It’s a nice thought.”

 

* * *

**-000- The Present -000-**

Garrus’ memory faded back into shadows, his car swinging into the garage of his apartment. The door to the elevator slid open at his approach and when it arrived on his floor his head was bowed in thought. Kaidan and Shepard’s relationship crumbled shortly after the victory over the Reapers. Garrus remembered her, bleeding and confined to bed, ordering Kaidan out of her hospital room with a voice that boomed off the walls like a kettle drum. They’d been arguing beforehand and afterwards Garrus did not see the two together for weeks. Since then Alenko had been in and out of different relationships, finally settling down to marry a human woman named Xao Li after moving back to Earth. His spectre work kept him traveling but the marriage seemed happy enough, at least for a few years.

Now he was in the midst of a divorce--a messy, vindictive divorce. Garrus noticed his old friend was more prone to anger than in the past, easier to incense and harder to placate. Thinking of Kaidan made him weary; it wasn't quite eleven years since they’d won the war and a little over six since he’d seen Jane. He wasn't an old man yet, he still had another century in him, but everyone he knew from his life on the Normandy felt aged. It wasn't bad--there were happy marriages, children, and successful careers for many of his friends, but they were different from the people he’d known. It bewildered him a little; he felt much the same now in his forties as he had in his thirties. He dwelled, too often, on whether or not he was the only one among them who had not grown in the ensuing years.

And Kaidan was no longer half as gentle as Garrus remembered. It was a gradual change in personality which he suspected began the day he married his wife. They made a fine looking couple, but the chemistry always felt wrong. Garrus understood--getting over a woman like Commander Shepard had to draw on a man. Now he was gruffer, but still kind at heart. What the mission would do to his disposition was uncertain, but he was already on edge with Novani’s bravado.

And the mission itself? Garrus was wary of that too. No operation with Shepard at its heart was ever simple, experience taught him that. This was going to be a long term commitment, and they’d be fighting Liara the entire way. Maybe a few other undesirables too if the Broker called in some favors. He cursed under his breath, hissing at the long months ahead of him. Walking the silent, glass paneled hallway of his apartment, he waved a hand in front of the ID lock, stumbling back as Vix leapt into his arms. “Whoa, girl!” A tongue textured like wet concrete lapped at one side of his face, coating the scars in viscous saliva while several hundred pounds of weight leaned against his chest.

  
Vix was a three year old varren, a birthday present from Wrex. He’d been skeptical about keeping one as a domestic pet until Jack called him a raging pussy. After consulting with Joker on the definition and implication of the word ‘pussy,’ he’d given it a shot. Garrus and his sister were not allowed pets as children. With their father’s work moving them in-between Palaven and the Citadel, and the regulations regarding live animals in the massive space port, it was never seen as practical. Nowadays he had the sort of pull that made most paperwork disappear and keeping Vix wasn’t the problem six-year-old Garrus once bemoaned.

Her front paws scrabbled at his chest plates through his clothes while her back legs bounced up and down and her massive tail swung. “Down, down. Come on girl, down.” He laughed as she spun away and ran in a circle two times, growling at him. He crouched on his knees to scratch the top of her head. “Good girl!” She leaned into his talons and warbled, knocking his hand when he stopped. “How’s my girl today?” Garrus was an unashamedly doting father. “Come on, you know half the reason you’re happy to see me is because it’s dinner time, you ugly beast.” Vix rumbled, leaning against his leg as he patted her stomach. She pranced into the kitchen as he followed. “Unusual day at work today, girl. Had an interesting meeting and got a new assignment. Daddy’s going to be busy for a while.”

Garrus opened his freezer and pulled a shank of meat out, sliding it into his defroster. As he waited for it to warm he leaned down to nuzzle Vix’s face. “You better hope I don’t forget to feed you.” She slathered him in saliva again and he laughed, jerking back to wipe it away. “You’re the reason I can never bring a date back home, you know. Most women don’t appreciate varren spit on their nice outfits.” Vix gurgled as he spoke, “Yes, I know you do it on purpose. Jealousy’s not very attractive.” She butted his knee, “I know, the food’s coming.” He picked up her bowl from the floor and pulled the meat from the defroster. “And I forgive you anyway, daddy’s always been a bit of a bachelor.” Vix tore into the food with a gusto he used to find disgusting but now just made him laugh. Garrus gave her a final pat, “Better not get sick on the carpet, I’ll start giving you smaller portions.”

He walked into his den, “Channel forty-nine,” he said, slumping onto his couch. “Dim lights and open curtains.” The room’s VI whirred to life at his words and it began to accommodate the orders. The melodic hum of a turian female’s voice greeted him, “Welcome home, sir. Would you prefer takeout or a meal cooked at home tonight?”

“Takeout. Fish, if there’s been any good shipments in. I want something spicy.” A screen filling up the entire width of one wall flickered on. He was in time for his evening show; a familiar face loomed on the screen. “Hello and welcome to the Citadel Report, I’m Diana Allers, your host, and this week’s most dire news is my topic: what is the Council doing about the surge in piracy and terrorism? More worryingly, batarian slavers have reappeared in our galaxy, to the dismay and anger of every civilized government. Khar’shan’s leaders staunchly deny any support or involvement in this despicable revival of crime but a few of the Council worlds are voicing their doubts.

“Tonight my guest Vorta Hokal, current ambassador to the Citadel and representative of the Batarian peoples, will voice her opinions on a matter she sees as both a bitter reminder of her species' past, and a chance to prove their worth as Council citizens.” Garrus barely noticed Allers back on the Normandy, although he always heard her boisterous political arguments with the crew over dinner in the mess hall. Somehow in the aftermath of the war they’d become friends. He liked his relationship with Allers: they met up in a discreet bar in the lower wards; while they drank she kept him up to date on the latest current events and he slipped her newly declassified tidbits from the Tower. Just four years ago he’d attended her wedding to an asari with whom she now had two daughters.

Settling in for the evening as he waited for the VI to put in his dinner order, Garrus let some of his nerves wash away. Vix wandered over from the kitchen and lay at his feet, licking her chops. He propped one foot on her, feeling the varren’s breath through the rise and fall of her back. He closed his eyes, still listening to Diana’s voice, and started to make his plans.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for skipping a week, I found myself a bit busier than usual. Thank you for anyone reading this and especially for the kudos.

**Chapter 2**   
  
**-000- Seven Years Ago -000-**

  
"You're sleeping less now than you did when we were at war." Garrus nudged a plate of food toward her.

"I ate already." Jane pushed her bangs back, "And I know." Her hands were flicking through a report on her omni-tool; she hadn't looked up from it since he'd entered the room.

"You ate six hours ago," he pushed the plate closer, "so humor me and have something. I do have your best interests at heart, Shepard."

Jane smiled and her eyes broke from the screen, "Sorry, I've been short with people lately. Probably from the lack of sleep." She pulled the plate on her lap; it had three hard boiled eggs, a peanut butter sandwich, and a sliced green apple. Simple fare, but luxurious in the post-war galaxy: much of the agricultural production was still struggling. Crops and livestock, even genetically modified ones, were taking longer to replace after the Reapers made it a priority to take out major agribusinesses. Chewing on her sandwich, Jane squinted at him, "So when was the last time you ate?"

"You're too good at that." Garrus crossed his arms, leaning against the back of his chair.

"At what?" her grin widened.

"At deflecting attention from yourself by taking care of other people. Too bad I've been around long enough to notice. That's what you get for having friends who can keep up with you."

"You can keep up with me?" Jane snorted through a mouthful of peanut butter, "You're getting awfully cocky, Vakarian. I seem to recall a few occasions where keeping up with me nearly killed you."

"And I seem to recall that, between the two of us, only one person in this room has survived the whole way through this little venture of ours without actually dying."

"Hey! You didn't have to deal with the Normandy blowing up." Jane leveled a finger at him, her eyes screwed up with laughter.

"And you've never single-handedly brought down a gunship or survived half a week against a merc army with nothing but ammo and a few explosives."

"Well you--" her omni-tool pinged, "Shit, it's Hackett. Give me a moment." She stood and walked a few feet away, bringing up her call screen. "Sir?"

"Shepard, sorry for the call, I know you're supposed to be off-duty for a few days." Hackett's stony face nodded at her.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." Shepard shrugged.

"I wish I could tell you to shelve that attitude, but there's not much time for rest." Hackett shook his head, "We've got a border dispute between the salarians and krogan."

A wrinkle appeared between Jane's eyebrows, her chest rose and fell slowly as a long breath of air blew out her nose. "All right," her eyes opened, "this is about Gellix?"

"Know your history, that's good, admiral." Hackett nodded, "A few holdouts are refusing the krogan appeals for colonization."

"That planet is supposed to be under turian authority." Jane exhaled, "So I suppose the Hierarchy must have relinquished it. Can't imagine they want to bother with it now, and it's a nice concession to their new allies. I’m guessing the holdouts are salarians.” Hackett nodded and she rolled her eyes, “No one's fired any shots yet?" She massaged her forehead, lips pulled into a resigned frown.

"Well, interestingly, the problem's not so much between the krogan and salarians as it is between the salarians and their own people. There are offshoots of the government who have basically abandoned their politicians--the ones who are left--and have tried to set up their own base of power. They're supporting the krogan; the rift has started a minor civil war within the ranks of authority."

"These offshoots are from the military forces who went against the Dalatrass?"

"Correct." Hackett nodded, "They've made it abundantly clear that the damage done to Sur'Kesh and their colony worlds is due at least in part to the Dalatrass' open hostility toward the krogan. There seems to be a rumor circulating among the people that the krogan might have aided them like the turians if she hadn't tried to sabotage the Genophage cure."

Jane's hand tapped against her chin as she frowned, "That's an interesting rumor. And I'm wondering who leaked word about the sabotage. The only people who heard about it were a few of my core crew on the Normandy and Wrex and Eve." Her frown deepened, "Hell, if I were guessing I'd put money on it being Eve." She paused, “Ah--I mean Urdnot Bakara.”

"Urdnot Bakara, yes. She's shrewd, the krogan are lucky to have her."

"They are, although I may have to check in with Tuchanka if she's been manipulating the salarians."

"I'll trust you to handle the negotiations then, Shepard."

"When can we meet? Is there a neutral ground we can arrange?"

"Earth has been suggested."

"Huh, all right. Do we have facilities appropriate for this?"

"We're considering the Hong Kong base, it's been rebuilt and almost totally refurbished. These negotiations need to happen soon." Hackett shook his head, "Catch a shuttle out to the base in two days, be prepared to catch a lot of flak from the anti-krogan side. They've dug in their heels and aren't going to give the planet up without everyone in Council Space hearing about it."

"I understand, sir. I'll leave the Citadel as soon as possible."

"Good. I'll see you in Hong Kong, Hackett out."

Her screen flickered off and Shepard turned to Garrus. "Every day," she limped back to her chair and picked up the tray of food as she sat. "This is the shit I deal with every day." Jane cracked the eggs shell on the edge of the table and began to peel it away. "I don't know, Garrus. I was so sick of fighting by the time we got to London. But it was a release, at least. Now when I'm pissed about something, I get to do what? Sleep it off? Sit on my ass and go over more statistical reports?" She bit the egg in half and dropped it back onto her plate.

"Every time I finish solving one problem I get saddled with ten more." Garrus agreed, "Victus has me at a different colony every month. I think this is the first time in weeks I've sat down and talked to a friend in person. The two of us need to retire."

"Some day, huh?" Jane sighed, throwing her head back and eyeing the ceiling. "It is good to see you, by the way. I get to see my Alliance people, but keeping track of everyone else is difficult." She picked the egg back up and popped it in her mouth, "How have you been doing, anyway? Besides being busy."

"Well, all right. My family is still on Palaven, doing their best to get back to being okay, like everyone else. I talk to them every day, them and the Primarch."

"And me." She grinned.

"And you. Although more of that's been work related."

Jane groaned, "Yeah. It's been a lot of fun talking numbers, hasn't it?" She glanced at him sideways as she began to pick at another egg. "You been talking to Tali much?"

Garrus glanced back at her, "I take it you have."

"Well she needs to talk to someone. That's not an accusation, by the way. Your business is your business, Garrus." Jane's expression was soft, her voice low.

He scratched his neck, not meeting her eyes, "How is she?"

"Good. Busy too; almost too busy to worry about breaking up with her boyfriend." She emptied a glass of water, shrugging.

Garrus leaned over his legs, staring at the floor, "I don't really know how to apologize to her. I've been avoiding any real contact with Tali for a few months. It hasn't been easy," he shook his head, "I had to convince the Primarch that his secretary with no personal connections to the quarian people was better suited to managing our relations than I was. I wasn't exactly honest about why I didn't want to do the job myself."

"Yeah, that's about the same talk I had with Hackett about transferring Alenko onto a different ship after I got out of the hospital." Jane shook a strand of hair out of her eyes.  
"How is he?" Garrus glanced up and watched Shepard's expression cloud.

"Good, I think. We talk now, cordially and all that.” She cracked another eggshell and scattered the shards on her plate, “There's nothing there anymore. I was still holding on a little before we hit Earth but that was a couple years back. And then that fight--" she shrugged, "It ended things. I still love him but I--" Jane opened her mouth twice before she could gather her words, "I still love him but we can't be together. Maybe if I had the time back then to let everything that was happening sink in--" She gave one solemn shake of her head. Jane fell into a sour silence, pulling her sandwich into pieces which she dropped in her mouth and chewed without relish.

"Shepard. You need to take some time off." He sat up, folding his hands in his lap.

"So do you." Jane didn't look up from her food.

"Yes, but I'm not still trying to properly mourn Thane."

Her face turned blotchy red, "Garrus, _no_."

"Look, I can't say I know exactly what you're going through, but there's almost no one in the galaxy right now who hasn't lost someone to this war. You don't need to bury your feelings, the reality for this generation is we’re dealing with loss on a scale so massive the grief and anger can't even be imagined. Shepard," his voice grew hard and she met his gaze with blurry eyes, "just because you're a soldier and you're expected to deal with these kinds of losses doesn't mean it's going to happen effortlessly."

Jane pushed her plate onto the table and sat back, sinking into her chair. "I'm worried." She mussed her hair with one hand, "If I stop now, if I give myself time to rest, I wonder if I'll be able to get back up." Sitting forward, Jane covered her mouth, "I should be dead, Garrus."

"Shepard--"

"I'm not trying to be fatalistic. I'm just pointing out the logistics. I had a conversation with Edi once," her eyes dulled with memory, "and she told me the probability of my survival was basically nil; I kept beating the math. And I accepted that." She lowered her hand and gave him a steely smile, "I came to terms with my own nonexistence. I thought that London would be it. I would fight my last fight, I would give everything. Then I would be at rest." She hid her face behind her hands, "It's why I broke up with Kaidan afterwards. I didn't want to lie to him. Garrus," Jane peeked through the cracks of her fingers, "I had no idea the possibility of a future with him was something real. I really thought--" she got up from her chair and paced away. "Maybe I need to take some time off." Shepard murmured.

Garrus stood and put his hand on her shoulder, "You don't have to do it now. Just think about it. It would be good for you."

"Fine," she turned and frowned, "but I want to hear you make the same promise, Vakarian."

"All right, Shepard. Just don't be alarmed when the Primarch knocks your door down demanding to know where his best advisor's gone." They shared a grim laugh; about a year later Jane would step onto a shuttle bound for the asari homeworld and never return.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

  
Kaidan raised his glass at Garrus from his table, tipping his head back to swallow the last mouthful of beer. “She’s going to catch the attention of our blue friend, Vakarian.” He signalled to the waiter for another drink, “And then we’re fucked.”

Climbing onto a stool and setting his elbows on the table, Garrus requested a brandy from the waiter when he walked over with Kaidan’s order. “She’s not that indiscreet, Alenko. Our coworker has been at this longer than we’ve been alive. We have to trust that our superior knows what she’s doing. Or at least trust the centuries of experience the asari brings.” Garrus and Kaidan’s work made it necessary for a strict no-name basis in their conversations. He was certain there was always at least one Shadow Broker informant flitting around purely for the sake of keeping tabs on the two of them. Still, it was safer than meeting at a house until one of them had a dampener set up. They were expensive to run consistently and Garrus preferred the casual atmosphere of the bar. He had a handful of favorites spread across the Citadel where he’d meet up with friends or coworkers, when the occasion called for it.

Kaidan watched him from behind the rim of his glass. “Maybe. I’m not trying to paint her as incompetent. But she doesn’t know; she doesn’t know shit.” He gulped the beer, “But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To fill in the gaps.”

“There are a lot of gaps.” Garrus accepted his brandy from the waiter with a nod. “And it’s not going to be fun keeping her from interrogating us. It won’t take her long to figure out we’re lying about certain things, and then she’s going to get angry.”

“Yeah, it's tricky.” Garrus nodded back, pausing for a moment as he drummed his fingers on the table. “And Alenko--sorry for snapping at you. I didn't mean to sound accusing.”

“I was getting angry over nothing.” Kaidan shrugged, “I don’t know what pissed me off, it was stupid. I just haven’t thought much about the Commander lately. Admiral I mean.” He lowered his head, eyes staring into the amber depths of his cup, "I've always been the doubting voice when it came to her. After she turned up again on the bad guys' side I just--" The pause he trailed into was heavy with the hurt of old wounds. Garrus gave him one hard slap on the back and Alenko gave him a small smile. They sat in companionable silence, nursing their drinks.

A young turian woman from across the room was eyeing him, or perhaps his scars, as he tipped the alcohol into his mouth. She was at least half his age and as soon as he was done admiring her sleek figure he turned back to Kaidan. “We’ll have to be tactful, but it will work out. Our colleague isn't known for her temper.”  
“She is known for being a pretentious ass.” Alenko’s forehead wrinkled, “At least that’s what I've heard.”

“Her service record is impressive, we have to give her that.”

“I guess we do.” He shook his head at Garrus, “Do you think we’re actually going to make headway on this? I’m still trying to figure out what the salarian’s angle is.” He signaled for another drink and folded both arms on the table. “The mission feels off. The management usually has more than personal opinions backing their orders up. Especially when they’re all divided on the matter.”

“I couldn't say,” Garrus shrugged, “I like the salarian. She’s always struck me as less dissembling than her predecessors.”

“I thought so too. But this--it just feels wrong. Like there’s more information we should know, the usual political bullshit. And I don’t like it. I've gotten to a point in my career now, Vakarian, where I don’t get mission details hidden from me--and neither do you. We've handled some of the most sensitive and classified information in the galaxy. I’m not used to this kind of keepaway game of information unless something rotten is going round.” He threw up a hand, “Maybe it’s just paranoia.”

“No, you’re right. If this was a straightforward kind of deal the salarian wouldn't be so vague about it all. I’ll keep an eye out for trouble.”

“Glad I’m not the only one of us who’ll be checking over his shoulder.”

Garrus’ mandibles flared with laughter, “When you've been in as many foxholes as us the inclination is natural.” He leaned over the table, “Speaking of, is there some turian girl with green colony markings making eyes at me?”

Kaidan’s eyebrows rose as he glanced around Garrus’ head, “Yep, she’s whispering to her friend now.”

“Hah! Well I think I’ll be going then, sorry to cut this short.”

“You’re running away. From some girl.” His tired mouth twitched into a smile as Kaidan watched Garrus hand the waiter delivering his second beer a credit chit.

“She’s younger than I prefer my women.”

“Funny, on the Normandy--”

“You’re only proving my point, Alenko.” Garrus accepted his chit back and nodded a goodbye as he left, ignoring Kaidan’s smirk. Women who approached him in bars generally did so either because they perceived him to be a smoldering, dangerous type--something he might have once considered a compliment--or because they recognized him from the vids. Both reasons were tiresome, and he was content with bachelorhood. He’d only gotten out of a relationship five months back, a casual but long-term affair. It ended with his partner’s chilly question of whether or not he saw them moving forward in life together. He didn't answer and, after several moments of loaded silence, she left his apartment and they hadn't spoken since.

She was the fourth woman he’d seriously dated since breaking things off with Tali. Looking back it was obvious a woman almost ten years his junior and an admiral of the quarian Flotilla, then of Rannoch itself, might be a difficult match to make. During the war, however, it just seemed like a risk worth taking. Afterwards they were preoccupied with rebuilding their homeworlds and months would pass before they spoke. Then one day Tali asked if he’d consider moving to Rannoch; Garrus said no. The relationship disintegrated after that, quietly and meekly. She was married now, to a quarian ex-marine who reminded Garrus of himself in an uncomfortable sort of way. But she was happy and they were friends again, so he couldn't complain.

Outside the bar groups of people congregated. It wasn't a popular area, but the small strip of shops and restaurants was well-loved by locals. Here and there he saw friends disappearing into establishments or the odd bit of business going on in shadowy corners. It reminded him of his first beat assignment, although the actual area was now mostly gentrified avenues of expensive boutiques and cafes. The lower wards were still the same hubbub of life and seedy establishments, he liked to walk the hallways there and people watch. But tonight he wouldn't indulge himself; tonight his varren would get free reign of the mattress.

Walking back to his car he went over a list of people he needed to make calls to. Shepard's mother, Hannah Shepard, was the first. She was still serving in the Alliance, an admiral like her daughter, and he knew she was one of the few people Jane saw in person. He talked to the elder Shepard about it before, and she'd been firmly mum on the subject. Still, she was his best lead. He expected her to be uncooperative, but there were useful hints he could squeeze from tight-lipped conversation. Then a slew of old friends and crewmates from the Alliance, plus a few independent information brokers with long memories and no love of Liara.

He would split the list of Alliance personnel with Alenko, and maybe give a few to Novani. The rest he wanted to handle personally, since most of them were good friends. He wasn't sure how his investigation would be received; the majority of the Normandy's crew had respected Jane's decision to retire and, grudgingly, many of them accepted her willful disappearance. Caution was necessary, as soon as he began interviews Liara's agents would know something was up. He'd need to save them for later while shoring up on whatever details he could quietly obtain off the record.

The most difficult part would be keeping track of it all. Garrus was still considering how exactly to record his findings, once work started in earnest. His favorite option was devising a shorthand code he could transcribe by hand on a tablet with no wireless connection; he'd keep the actual data physically on himself at all times in a small drive, maybe tucked against his chest or adhered to the inside of his cowl. It was cloak and dagger in a way that he found amusing. This was the sort of thing he imagined spectres doing as a child.

By the time he was home Garrus was lost in preparation. As Vix snuffled around his office he put together a takeaway kit for emergencies--in case the mission ever took him off-station in a hurry, or Liara discovered Vilus' orders and sent agents to befuddle his work. He had bunkers and hidey-holes half the galaxy over where he could do his work in peace. Vix could stay with friends--he knew one couple who lived out on a colony farm that wouldn't mind picking his girl up for a while if it really came to that. He scratched her head, eyeing his collection of pistols. His old Carnifax was among them and as Garrus turned it over in his hands he tried to imagine what seeing Shepard again would be like.  
Shepard's visage swam into his mind's eye: Jane as he remembered her right before she vanished. Tired green eyes, a deep frown carved into her mouth, red hair unkempt and sweeping over her cheeks which bore the marks of her labor. She received reconstructive surgery after surviving the Crucible's detonation but, as she'd confided, there were so many new scars she could hardly stand being naked anymore; she'd flinch away from mirrors the way he used to the first few months after their reunion on Omega. Had the six years in seclusion from her life done anything to help them fade? What was she doing? Garrus' imagination pictured her as a recluse living in a pocket of wilderness or a private mercenary taking out pirates and smugglers.

He hoped she'd be pleased to see him; it was so long since they'd last spoken he had trouble remembering her voice. He had vids of her, on the news and a few personal films the Normandy crew accumulated, but the quality of her recorded voice never fit his memories. The rest of the night while his hands were busied with work his mind wandered after thoughts of his best friend.

When Garrus passed out on his desk, his fingers lingered on one of the framed photos he kept there. In it, three grimy people leaned against a massive form of chitinous scales and muscle. Jane Shepard had her right arm around his waist and the left settled on Grunt's shoulders. She grinned, a rocket launcher resting against one leg, and a mess of grenades strapped on a belt. Her head was angled to the right, brushing against the shoulder of his battle-scarred armour. "We're taking a picture of this," she joked, "because tomorrow I won't believe we fought a thresher maw on foot and lived."

They gathered round the corpse, splashed with the orange blood of the Gatatog warriors and bits of varren and klixen gore. The weight of her arm on his waist felt intimate, but didn't bother him. All three of them were still breathing hard, his heart was a machine gun in his chest. In that moment, as Jane's drone snapped the picture, it felt like their battles were already won. He would have followed her into the Omega-4 Relay that day, if she'd asked. Maybe this time around he'd convince her to follow him instead.

 

* * *

 

"This is everything I've been able to pull from the previous two searches." Novani flicked her fingers at the projected screen floating above the office table. They were meeting in a private office in the Citadel Tower, one they'd each gone over several times with scanning programs to make sure it was bug free. On record the room was officially listed as reserved for a meeting on spectre requisition guidelines. "Memorize everything now, these files are going back into the archives as soon as we're done today."

Garrus started transcribing the data onto his tablet, pulling one detail forward and enlarging it. "So the last known fact about Shepard's whereabouts is she boarded a shuttle for Thessia? Looks like she was recorded as one of the passengers on the flight but there's no proof she ever left the space port after it landed." He squinted, "Huh. Among the few hundred or so human passports that entered asari space, not one of them belonged to the admiral."

"Nothing we shouldn't expect, Shepard's known for doing stealth work. Her specialty wasn't infiltration, but she picked up some tricks over the years. I heard a couple rumors about a heist on Bekenstein that were interesting." Kaidan leaned forward on one elbow glancing with raised eyebrows at Garrus who shook his head, "Getting in and out of a major spaceport undetected, even a well-guarded one, wouldn't have been an issue. Especially if she had help."

"And we're assuming she didn't go underground without help?" Novani tapped her lips, she stood leaning on one side, arms crossed. Her face was illuminated by the projection screen and her dark eyes were narrowed with concentration.

Garrus nodded, "Yes, she's good, but not good enough to fly completely off the grid for this long without someone there to cover the tracks she doesn't have the technical know-how to handle. Shepard is one of the sharpest officers the Alliance had, and she may or may not have been friends with a few notorious criminals--"

"Jondum Bau once told me she was friends with Kasumi Goto." Novani's face crinkled.

"--but she wouldn't be able to set up a new life for herself without someone else giving her some tips." Garrus finished. "Unless she'd been planning to do this for years, but I'm willing to throw that possibility out." He held up a finger to Novani and Alenko, "Because I know Shepard. She wasn't interested in disappearing, not at first. There was a lot of issues she was wrestling with, almost all of them were personal." Kaidan's expression screwed up. "That's why she didn't leave once she was out of the hospital." He laughed, "She told me there was still work to do.”

“So what changed?” Moraina leaned on her elbows, watching him from across the table.

“She didn't know how to step back.” Garrus shrugged, “Which was good for everyone else and not so much for her. If she was awake she was working; Shepard kept herself alive on nutrient paste and caffeine. And then one day she was gone." He bowed his head, "I wasn't really surprised,” he fumbled with his tablet. “but it felt off when she didn't come back after a few years.”

“And you don’t think she’s in trouble.”

“No,” Kaidan interjected, “if you'd worked with her you’d know.”

“Well,” Moraina stood up and stretched, “now we begin the hunt.” Her smile was feral, “I’m looking forward to meeting this woman.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading, and especially comments and kudos. I will continue to try and put out a chapter every Sunday.

###  **Chapter 3**

**-000- Twelve Years Ago -000-**

“Thank you for coming to see me.” Thane gestured at the chair opposite to his and Garrus sat down, glancing once around the room. It was the first time he’d seen it, at least since Thane moved in. Like Samara, Thane had put little effort into furnishing his quarters. Garrus expected that though, the two were remarkably similar in temperament and personality.

“It’s fine. Shepard was about to ban me from the battery anyway. I’ve spent more time there than Joker has in the cockpit, apparently.” He chuckled as he sat down, shrugging.

“After a month here I was surprised to learn she was not a mother.” Thane lowered his eyes to his folded hands. “She is quite maternal, in her way.”

“Shepard’s always checking in, she talks to the crew more than the yeoman does.” He shifted in his chair, he could never get comfortable in the straight-backed human design. Months ago Shepard bought him one styled for turians, wasting money he thought she could be putting toward better gear and ship defenses. She punched him in the arm when he complained about it. “So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

Thane blinked, “I wish to discuss our Commander.”

“Shepard? What about her?” Garrus scratched his neck, avoiding the patch that was holding his face together. The itching was excruciating; Dr. Chakwas said that was good--he was healing properly and the nerves weren’t so damaged they’d lost all sensation. He waited as Thane hesitated, wondering if he was about to have a fumbling conversation about what Shepard’s favorite color was and which restaurants she liked on the Citadel. When Krios spoke, finally, Garrus started at the sound of his voice.

“She is like fine verse,” Thane’s head angled down as he spoke, his words were slow and reverent. “There is poetry in her manner and rhythm in her movement. Every day she wakes as if going to war and her breath is like fire on my neck, yet her words are balm for my soul. I was uncertain of her when we first met, then I was impressed; now I am somewhere between awe and worship.” He chuckled. “She does not like that. She tells me we’ll never know each other if I am determined to see her as an angel.” Thane folded his hands together, “It is part of coming to terms with my death, I think. The more I meditate on my dwindling time the more everything around me is cast in the divine. Life is sacred, I have always known that, but now I have seen it in the hands of a woman who stalks gods and monsters.”

Garrus steepled his fingers, nodding,“The longer I stay, the more fantastic it all gets. And somehow none of us are dead.”

“Not yet, no. Perhaps you will live to see her triumph. I am envious.” Thane rested his chin against his hands, “I will not be able to protect the people I love for much longer. I will have to trust Kolyat to take care of himself, and Jane as well.” It was startling to hear her first name; Garrus had never called Shepard anything else. Their eyes met, “But perhaps I can trust you to at least watch over her for me, when I am gone. And that time is not so far away.”

“Watch her for you,” Garrus shifted from side to side, shaking his head. “Krios, I’m barely capable of keeping myself alive. Shepard’s always been the one to look after me, not the other way around.”

“That is true of all of us.” Thane made a sweeping motion. “She is our guardian and keeper. A leader and also a healer, binding us as one. But you could still remind her she is mortal, there are not enough people in her life who do. You could make sure she eats every day, remembers to sleep. See that she goes to Dr. Chakwas regularly.” He stood, folding both hands behind him, resting them on the small of his back. He paced the room with quick, certain steps. “If you were another man I would not ask this of you, I would be too wary, too selfish to let someone get so close. I know I am not the first man she’s loved on the Normandy. She’s told me of the other, Kaidan Alenko?” He paused to look at Garrus, head tilted in question.

“Alenko left her,” Garrus shrugged. “If she still believed they could be together you wouldn’t be with her now. Things felt pretty spelled out back on Horizon. So far as I know they haven’t communicated since.”

“They have not. She’s told me so.” Thane lowered his eyes and gave a bark of laughter. “I did not believe it was possible for me to feel jealousy anymore. I had come to peace with myself but she has stirred my passion. I am awake again.”

It was impossible for Garrus to think of Shepard romantically, she was a friend--and a commanding officer. Someone he’d unburdened himself to more than once, but platonically. They’d shared everything but food together but he was at a loss to see her as Thane did.

The drell stared at him with bright eyes and a solemn smile carved deep into his face. “So may I ask you to do this? My time on this ship is shorter by the day. When war comes she will have you there to lean on, to keep her from slipping away into her work. You are her friend, for a longer time than I have been. I ask you out of desperation; I cannot support her from a hospital bed.”

“Krios, I’d do it for her regardless, Shepard is my best friend.” Garrus eyed him from behind his folded fingers. “I’m not going to let the Commander kill herself over work.”

“I am relieved,” Thane lowered his head. “Although I am still jealous.” He laughed again, “You must promise me not to fall in love with her until after I have returned to the ocean.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Krios. Shepard and I have had the same relationship for years. If there was something there we would have found it by now.”

“And yet my jealousy has not been alleviated. I fear there is a day when you will realize why I have become so enthralled with her. I fear that she will find a man who will not soon be confined to a bed. It is invigorating.” Thane smiled at Garrus, “I am ablaze with feelings again, and while some of that is regret I have discovered every new day finds me radiant with happiness, in spite of my circumstances.” He bowed, “And so I am grateful. If it cannot be me, ‘watching her six’ as she would say, at least it can be you.”

Garrus shook his head, shrugging as he scrambled to reply, “Well I--you don’t have to thank me for doing what a friend should do. I care about her--not like you, of course, but I--” he coughed, and then drew himself up with a sharp breath. “Shepard is my best friend. I will follow her anywhere--into war with the Reapers and whatever comes after. Never think I wouldn’t.” He stood and, after hesitating, offered his hand. They shook and he gripped Thane’s palm the way Shepard had the first time he’d come aboard the Normandy. It was a pact made in secrecy, and not one he would think about for years.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

Moraina Novani's bondmate once told her she had feline grace. She had to ask exactly what that meant and got treated to a lecture about the felidae family of Earth animals. Grix's fascination with alien fauna grated on her nerves while he was still alive, but a good sixteen years after his passing it was the little quips about varren mating rituals or the lifespans of Khar'shanian eels she remembered most. Her salarian partner died shortly before the Reaper invasions and she thanked the Goddess every day for it. In life Grix was timid and delicate--the stress of a deadline alone used to send him into frenzies. They’d met while she was investigating unethical experimentations at a biochemical company. She’d ended Grix’s career there in the process but they married less than a year later on his sixteenth birthday. Shortly after she gave birth to Reeva, who had a little over twenty years with her father before he passed on. Their daughter died on Thessia during the war; Moraina was still unsure if she had the courage to bring another child into the galaxy.

She had not been back to the homeworld in centuries. Of course, Thessia wasn't really home--she was born on the Citadel. Moraina pulled her coat close, watching other passengers with darting eyes and wishing she'd smuggled her tactical cloak in the carry-on; coming here was a terrible idea. She should have sent Alenko or Vakarian, but the obvious advantages she possessed for this part of the investigation seemed more important.

Nausea crept into her stomach as she stepped off the shuttle transport and into the station Jane Shepard vanished from. The bustle was incredible considering her people's utter failure to repel the Reapers just a decade ago. Still, the signs of their harvest were unmistakable. Of the thousands of asari Moraina watched pass through her field of vision, the overwhelming majority were young maidens, most still children by her race’s standards.

During the invasion the Reapers concentrated on annihilating the most powerful of their kind--matriarchs of every stripe were hunted and killed, or harvested. Their army and fleet, composed mainly of older maidens and matrons, were destroyed in the Fall of Thessia. Children, meanwhile, were squirreled away in bunkers and safe houses as their parents died in battle. Their youth was their only blessing; every adult asari had biotics training, so every adult was a threat. On many asari worlds and colonies the Reapers spared few resources to exterminate children, who were instead left to starve in bombed-out settlements. Moraina had been assigned the task of scouting out survivors during the thick of the fighting, a few months before the activation of the Crucible. She woke up at night after dreaming of entire cities full of little, wizened bodies lying motionless in the ruins--ravaged by scavengers. Tiny blue and purple faces grown pale with gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes, swollen bellies from months without food.

She shook the images out of her head, glowering as she pushed forward; the crowds parted as she walked, her rage palpable. Her thoughts began to funnel into a single goal. There would be no obvious signs of Shepard's disappearance. She did not expect to find video footage of her going into some dark corner with mysterious individuals, nor did she expect to meet someone who saw the admiral either--at least not one who would give the information willingly. Those trails were six years cold, she wouldn't waste the effort to revive them. Instead she would follow the streams back to the source, and steal what knowledge she could before the Shadow Broker gave chase.

Moraina spent hours stalking leads; in the first few she ferreted out agents and informants of the Broker. There were always a few in major hubs of transportation like this--keeping tabs on traveling dignitaries and unsavory elements. She watched them; gauging their interactions with other people, how they went about their business, how they moved.

There were four she knew about: three asari and one volus. Moraina picked out two she wanted for questioning. One of them was greedy and the other a smarmy ass. They would fall apart under pressure with the right interrogation technique. One had been arrested a few times before the wars broke out and had violated her parole--technically she could arrest her. She tucked the knowledge away, leaving the agents unmolested.

Next she went hunting for the Broker’s bugs. The ones she found in the port were latched onto cameras, secretly leeching their video and audio feeds. They were everywhere; she had a device on her omni-tool that blocked her image from recording, but the extent and reach of surveillance was astonishing. Moraina had not investigated the Broker before, the Council was careful not to step on their toes. The new information illuminated her view, the Broker was even more capable than she imagined. Her ignorance shook her confidence, but did not deter her intent.

After hacking into one of the bugs and setting a tracking program on it, she left. Moraina got lunch at a cafe, letting herself be seen in public. She lingered there, dwelling on her food and the warm air. It was spring on Thessia, a sacred time; children born in this season were considered lucky. Reeva had been born in the spring while Moraina was on an asari colony moonlighting for the salarian government. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to send away the ghost of her daughter’s face. After a nearly four hour lunch she got up to leave. She caught a cab and programmed in her destination, reclining her seat the whole way.

When her ride slowed, it took her another twenty minutes before she could force herself out of the car. About four years ago the asari government commissioned a monument for the fallen. It was massive and still ongoing in its construction as billions of names were collected and sorted. They had opened it to the public, however, and it was her first time there. She walked along its length, an expansive wall of names on black glass. It took her an hour to find the right section. The monument was interactive--one huge swathe of names was all asari medical personnel. She sat on the ground beside the wall, her fingers tapping past hundreds of names till one leapt into her vision: Reeva Novani.

Her hands were shaking as she touched Reeva’s name, it enlarged and a portrait of her baby popped up. There was a short description stating the beginning and end of her service as a medical volunteer and a list of battles she’d served in. It was barely two paragraphs long; Moraina dragged a hand across her face. It said nothing about how talented of a cook she was, how she loved the color green, or the passion for phosphorescent jellyfish she’d inherited from Grix. The tears came then, she bit her tongue to keep from howling. It was a lonely at the monument--Moraina had come during working hours and was alone save for a few other stragglers.

She didn’t stay long, fleeing from the dark scar of names where her daughter’s memory slept. She was back on a shuttle to the Citadel that day; within a few hours of landing she was at the Citadel Tower meeting up with Alenko and Vakarian.

Right before entering the tower she straightened her clothes, patting out the wrinkles and wiping her face clean. Moraina walked into their meeting room with a smile. “I managed to hack a bug without too much trouble. And I observed two possible targets for our interrogations. We should get started on their profiles.”

“This is a good start. Once we’ve scoped them out we need to discuss the right time to bring them in.” Garrus tapped the conference room table, “I would have liked to go to Thessia myself--”

“And what reason would you have to visit?” Moraina snapped, “It would be more trouble to fabricate a bullshit story about you having business there than me. My alibi’s actually authentic, no one’s going to fault me for wanting to see a war memorial.” She bit the inside of her cheek when Garrus raised one of his brow plates at her anger. A short silence followed and she fought the inclination to fidget.

“You have people on it, then?” Kaidan spoke at last, “Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s been over a decade, Alenko.” Moraina waved a hand. “I needed to get to it eventually.” There was a waver in her voice, “The Broker won’t realize what I was there for until we’re really on the admiral’s trail.”

“What are we getting from hacking the bug?” Alenko asked, pulling up his omni-tool’s screen with Garrus and Moraina as the three scanned through documents on their interrogation subjects.

“My tracking program should lead us back to whatever person or computer is gathering and organizing the image feeds from the ones in the space port. Maybe we can squeeze more information out of them.”

“That’s going to be interesting,” Garrus laughed, “we haven’t gone after the Shadow Broker’s people in years. I’d like to figure out what sort of facility we’re going to be raiding for this information. I don’t expect it to be as easy as spooking a few techs and confiscating data. The last time Shepard and I were on a mission involving the Broker we got a small army thrown at us.”

“She mentioned that, once.” Kaidan’s mouth twitched into a grin. “Something about ‘enough dead mercs to build Fort Knox out of corpses,’ I think it was.”

“I thought Shepard had it good with the Broker.” Novani’s eyebrows raised, leaning on the table with an elbow.

“She did--after we sorted through some rather unpleasant business.” He chuckled, “We were storming their base when the Broker realized they were in a very reduced position of bargaining. Right before Shepard kicked down their door they negotiated a ceasefire. After that, we had a decent relationship. We never got to meet the Broker in person but we got what we needed, at the time.”

“Which was what?”

“Information on the Collectors.” Garrus lied without a cough. “That was back when Shepard was considered a rogue agent for Cerberus.”

Moraina smirked, “Vakarian, some time you and I have to sit down and trade stories over a few drinks.”

“So long as it’s before we find Shepard. But if it’s after she better not be invited. I hate getting upstaged.” Garrus pointed at the picture of one of their targets, “I know this volus. That’s Barla Von.”

“The banker?” Kaidan brought up the same page, “Well shit, small world, isn’t it?”

“Financial advisor, I think.” Garrus tugged at his cowl, “It makes sense, we have known he’s an agent for years. I just didn’t expect him to be on Thessia. And working at a glorified airport.” The two of them frowned over the information.

“There’s a branch of the Vol Protectorate there--it oversees major financial deals going in-between their people and mine, especially any government-related business. The station I was at, Trebin International, it’s not just for intergalactic and planetary travel. They have a lot of major offices set up in the area, for all the visiting business representatives or dignitaries. There are embassies nearby too. It’s a convenient way for powerful people to have an easy access escape option if they’re two doors down from an off-world shuttle.”

“And you want to interview him?” Garrus tilted his head at her.

“Yes. He’ll crack. We just tighten the right screws and offer the right deal.”

“Barla Von didn’t strike me as someone easily cowed,” Kaidan scratched his chin. “Are you sure about this?”

“I am,” Novani nodded. “Trust me. I’ve dealt with perps like him before. They’re only cautious until they smell a chance to improve their own lot. I could see it in the way he handled clients.” She leered at his picture, “This one will give us what we need if we promise our silence and dangle an incentive. He knows he’s only an intermediary, at best. We can convince Vilus to help us pull a few strings if the volus has important information. There’s an opening in their embassy that our little friend could fill. It’s quite a step up from merely handling the money of dignitaries to actually being one. And if he can keep our talk quiet he’ll be able to continue working for the Broker from an even better position than before.”

“You’ve been studying up on this,” Kaidan sat back, nodding in approval. “Nice work, Novani.”

“I dug around on the ride back from Thessia.” Moraina tossed her head. “It wasn’t difficult to figure out what sort of approach to take. This other one,” she waved at her omni-tool’s screen and brought up a picture of their second target. “Is even less of a problem. Her name is Wassa Vari. She’s a low-life who’s gotten good at overhearing conversations she shouldn’t. She has a job in the maintenance department. Before the wars she was charged with aggravated assault and battery, that’s on top of breaking her parole. But about when she would have been brought to court the Reapers hit.”

“And so she’s been skating on a low-profile ever since.” Kaidan folded his arms. “Were the crimes in asari space?”

“It was Citadel territories. We can legally bring her in. We’ll arrest her, interrogate her for information, and then throw her in a cell. Let red tape take care of things for a while. The proceedings for pre-war crimes are all shot to hell right now since the Council hasn’t taken a strong stance on prosecuting them.”

“Good idea, we’ll have Vari subdued at least a few months in the meantime. And if we can get her to talk she won’t want other agents knowing she leaked.” Garrus sat back, eyes drifting to the ceiling as he absorbed the information. He blinked and leaned forward, “This is a great start. Here’s what Alenko and I have been doing: this is a list of every person we think might have some sort of inkling on Shepard’s whereabouts. And a lot who won’t know but may have ideas on where she could have gone.”

Garrus opened his prepared file, “I’m deleting this copy and overlaying it with garbage data as soon as this meeting is over so memorize it now.” He looked at Moraina, “We want to split the list between us. I’m still figuring out who should talk to her mother.”

“Her mother--Shepard’s mother is still alive?”

“Yes, Admiral Hannah Shepard is probably the one person who’s had direct contact to her daughter. The rest of us only get sporadic updates every so often.”

“You get messages from her?” Novani’s mouth gaped.

Alenko put up his hands. “They’re not traceable. We’ve tried, don’t think we haven’t.”

“They show up in our inboxes after a thorough screening, that’s pretty clear,” Garrus grumbled. “I've gone to a dozen experts to get something--anything. But it’s never substantial. And it’s never gotten me close to finding Shepard.” Laughter rumbled from his chest, “She likes to send holiday packages. I get one every year for some human celebration called Christmas.”

“She must enjoy being mysterious.” Moraina covered her mouth, hiding a smile, “I thought maybe that was all bullshit from the movies.”

“It is.” Kaidan glowered.

Moraina glanced at Garrus, who shrugged. “Well you’re both better suited to interviewing her mother than I am. You think the elder Shepard knows where her daughter is?”

“Possibly,” Garrus nodded. “But I don’t expect she’ll give us anything. She’s her mother.”

“And why the hell not?” A pair of blue hands splayed and Novani's voice was tinged with disbelief, “She’s an admiral, she’s got to know how much Shepard means to the Citadel--to the safety of the galaxy.”

“And she’s also her mother. That’s enough.” Moraina’s mouth thinned but she said nothing; for a moment her face turned away and a look passed over it that clenched Garrus’ gut in a strange way. She rubbed her forehead and nodded. “In any case,” he continued, “it will still be useful to interview her.”

“All right, I’ll leave it to you then.”

“We’re about at that point of no return,” Kaidan stroked his mouth. “Are we ready?” Each of them scrutinized the other; long stares were exchanged in silence. Finally, Garrus nodded and Moraina mirrored him. “Let’s unfurl the umbrellas then,” Kaidan rolled his shoulders. “The shitstorm is about to hit.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and especially for people who leave comments or kudos. I will continue to try and update on Sundays.

### Chapter 4

**-00- Six Years Ago -00-**

Jane stepped off the shuttle transport, putting a hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. The light reflected off the rust-colored landscape and made the world glow orange. It reminded her of Mars, with its undeveloped deserts that stretched into a red horizon. But the memory brought loneliness with it, and she set it aside, hoisting her duffle bag onto her left shoulder.

The settlement of Yamada was tiny, a population of just over four hundred lived and worked the solar and wind farms which covered vast swathes of land. The machines went on for miles but were mostly autonomous, requiring only periodic maintenance from engineers and mechanics. The town itself did not have enough colonists to people it. It was named after its female founder, who was on the first human settlement ships to arrive on Intai'sei and begin eking out a life in the arid sandbox Jane planned to call home.

Intai'sei was one of the populated planets which had mostly escaped the Reapers' notice. The initial count of people living there was just over a hundred and fifty thousand and, with such a minimal number of sentient beings to harvest, the Reapers only sent a single contingent of invaders. This had been made up of husks and cannibals--the very least of their army. From what she read of the reports, Jane guessed the planet had been dismissed as irrelevant and the Reaper forces dispatched there were solely tasked with eliminating the colonists and destroying their settlements. They succeeded in killing off almost half of Intai'sei's inhabitants by the time she'd activated the Crucible, and the remaining eighty thousand or so survivors were slowly trying to piece their lives back together.

Limping into the shuttle station's crumbling building, Jane was greeted by a heavyset woman with biceps as big as her head. She was gray-haired and hard-eyed; an ugly scar ran in a pink, jagged line over her right eyebrow and disappeared into her hairline. When she smiled some of the hardness in her dark eyes retreated, "Couldn't believe it when they said someone was moving out here. Figured most folk were trying to keep to their own homes and such. Lot of rebuilding these past couple of years." She moved forward and held out a calloused hand, "Name's Carla Morishita. I'm the mayor, of a sort."

"Didn't expect I'd get greeted by the mayor when I moved in." Jane shook her hand, which felt like sandpaper. "Sorry I'm taking up your time, I'm sure there's better things for you to be doing than rolling out the welcome wagon. I appreciate it, though."

"No trouble, no trouble at all." Carla shook her head, "And if I'm honest, I wanted to size you up a bit. See what sort of person we got moving in. You're a soldier." Her eyes rested on Jane's dog tags and then on her duffle bag. "You related to anyone on Intai’sei?"

"Well," Jane set down her bag and wiped sweat from her lips. "No, I'm not. Not anymore. I inherited an apartment from an uncle of mine, he died before the war broke out, and I was looking for someplace to settle down."

"Don't got any family on Earth? Or the colonies?" Carla's scar puckered, her eyebrows drawing together.

"No. They're gone." Jane shrugged, with the casualties inflicted by the Reapers it wasn't a difficult lie to tell. "I was a spacer. Mother and father were in the Alliance my whole life, so I've always been a ship rat. I went where the brass told me to go," she shrugged again. "After everything was over I stuck around Earth and helped out. But after a couple of years I just couldn't stay in the navy anymore." Her eyes closed for a moment and then jolted open when a crushing hand gripped her shoulder.

Carla's eyes were black with emotion and she nodded, "No shame in that, girl. Thank you for your service. I'm sure there're more people alive today because you fought the good fight. We respect Alliance folk. Don't think we're going to give you any trouble for it."

"Thank you." Jane's face ached as she smiled, "But that's why I'm here. I just want to be some place I don't have to be a soldier. I thought Intai'sei could use another body and I liked the look of the land. I was hoping to find work here, ma'am."

Carla's laugh boomed and she shook like an earthquake, "Girl, I like the sound of that! Now what in the hell should I call you? I got your life story but no name."

"Ashley Cooke, ma'am."

"Well, Miss Cooke, welcome to Intai'sei. I hope you tan well." Carla laughed again, "Now let's see about getting you hunkered down into this apartment of yours before we get you introduced to the townsfolk."

 

* * *

 

**-00- The Present -00-**

The cool glow of blue computer screens lit the entire room with a pale, moony light. Everything hummed: with energy, with purpose, with secrets. Glyph flitted in-between monitors; there were actually three--or was it four?--of him now. They were a shared intelligence. He was almost a friend now, the one constant companion these past few years. Liara was pacing back and forth, reviewing reports on five different displays while arguing over the phone.

“I’d love to celebrate the Spring Equinox, dad, but work is--well I know I haven’t--” She snorted, “You’re terrible. All right, I’ll make time. No, I’m not bringing anyone with me. No, I don’t think I--fine, fine. I love you too. Goodbye, dad.” Liara pinched the bridge of her nose, Matriarch Aethyta was firm about ‘father-daughter time.’ She was one of the rare individuals Liara saw with any regular basis outside of work. The gruff insistence in her naggings reminded Liara of Wrex, and the thought made her smile.

“Glyph, clear my schedule for at least three days for the Equinox. Forward all queries to my omni-tool and put out a notice that I will be in private meetings at the time so the agents aren’t antsy.”

“It will be done.” Several computerized voices piped in unison, “Shall I book you a flight to Illium?”

“Yes, the usual shuttleline will do.” She ran her hands along her scalp, perhaps it would be good to leave work for a few days. She was used to sorting through information, not blueprints, and the current business with the new base sapped much of her time. Liara invested a large chunk of resources to replace her Hagalaz ship. This was complicated, since she didn’t plan to assassinate the engineers and construction workers as a previous Shadow Broker had. Instead she relied on a series of convoluted work orders, obtaining parts and necessary schematics based on the previous ship from a host of companies which were then assembled by her own robotic drones. The cost of money and time were substantial but her ship was all but complete; unfortunately, she was still settling a few issues and hadn’t been able to put it back into orbit yet. For now, Liara was moving between a collection of different safehouses, bringing all of her tech with her. It was laborious but safer than staying in one place while her real base was fine-tuned.

She missed being on a ship, the convenience of mobility and privacy. The new base wouldn’t be as stationary as the last Broker’s vessel. Liara didn’t trust reassurances from her agents that Cerberus’ old cells were obliterated or disbanded. The Illusive Man had found the old Broker once, she couldn’t take the chance someone, somewhere, wasn’t in possession of that information too. One of her Glyph drones was scouting for viable planets to anchor the ship to; she wanted several different options she’d jump between at her discretion.

The prospects were exciting; Liara took a special joy in shrouding herself in misinformation and mystery. She needed to be--compared to the former Shadow Broker the circle of people who knew her identity was enormous. They were all people she trusted, but still, the number was too large. As time moved on many of them would age and pass away, a reality which saddened her. In a century or two she would no longer need to worry, such was her lot as an asari. Shaking off these thoughts she returned to her reports: a matriarch on Thessia was having an affair with her stepdaughter, the current dalatrass’ eldest son was mired in an infertility crisis, one of her agents had been detained for past crimes, a krogan warlord was plotting to overthrow a neighbor, and Aria T’Loak’s second in command had disappeared after investigating one of her eezo competitors.

Glyph was running the information across her collected files, checking for inconsistencies or coincidences. The matriarch’s affair was not her first and joined a list of infidelities, Aria’s missing commander was the second to disappear under such circumstances and Liara suspected the woman of culling her own people--why she wasn’t sure, but put out orders to her agents on Omega to keep their ears to the ground. “Glyph, bring up the file on Wassa Vari.”

“Of course, miss.” Pages scrolled, pictures and some video recordings popped up. Liara spent a few moments sifting through them; Vari was a lowlife. Not the first under her employment and not the most useful either. She’d contributed a few tidbits of information in the past decade and kept an eye on surveillance but did nothing to make her irreplaceable. “Arrested for pre-war offenses.” She tapped her bottom lip, shrugging after a moment, “Glyph, terminate Vari’s contract and put an agent on her in case she decides to start selling secrets, but mark it as low priority.” Other reports pinged onto the screens and Liara closed Vari’s file. She had forty-one hours before her flight to Illium and she planned to sleep through five of them and pack during one. She cracked her back and ordered a meal, settling into her desk the way a cat does a warm pillow. Several systems away Wassa Vari was spilling her guts.

 

* * *

 

Garrus sat down in his chair and leaned into it, crossing his arms over his chest and giving the perp a good, long stare. Wassa Vari had the same slouch he’d seen a thousand times in the interrogation room. There was resignation in the slump of her spine but contempt in the curl of her lips. She was lavender-skinned, her face weathered and faded. Too many years spent looking over her shoulder painted her face with an ugly glower and bad a habit of grinding her teeth. She was about three hundred but looked four centuries older. Her wrists were restrained in one of the standard interview chairs; since her record had a predilection for violence the Citadel allowed for physical precautions.

He ordered C-Sec to hold the asari in interrogation for almost an entire day; two officers softened her up for hours--questioning her about past crimes, keeping her awake and frazzled. Now, after nineteen hours getting grilled by cops, Garrus was ready to pounce. He wanted to be the first person all day to offer her a deal.

Vari was a bruised mess; she’d resisted arrest and tried to fight off C-Sec when they came for her at Trebin International. Her right eye had a dark purple splotch where she’d been decked after trying to throw a singularity while being cuffed; her wrists were chafed raw from the restraints.

Garrus was fresh, having bathed an hour ago and enjoyed a lunch at his favorite restaurant in the Wards. His clothes were pressed and clean, his eyes sharp and posture relaxed; Vari took him in with a sneer. He put his hands on the table, “Wassa Vari, my name is Garrus Vakarian. I’m a spectre.” She started, drawing back against her seat, and balled her fists, “Do you know why we’ve brought you in?”

Her furious grey eyes blinked rapidly and her face twitched slightly. “I haven’t done anything,” she croaked. “I don’t know where fucking C-Sec gets off coming after me on Thessia. You can’t do that, there’re laws.”

“Actually, the asari government is generally helpful when it comes to Citadel extraditions. Especially when the suspect is a nobody with a record.” Garrus pulled up a small tablet, “You’ve been arrested before: assault, battery--looks like this one was for robbery. It goes back a while, Vari. A couple centuries of misdemeanors and felonies with a few decades in prison. The last incident you were collared for went well, didn’t it? You were paroled, in spite of your history. Must have had a lucky break.” He scrolled down the tablet, “Except, here--this is funny. It says something about violating your parole.”

Wassa turned her head and spit on the floor, “You don’t know shit. I don’t know what you want, but you can shove it up your ass, bone-face.”

Garrus slammed his hands on the table and Wassa jumped, wrestling against her restraints. “Listen carefully Vari: your job is about to screw you, and I’m not talking about fixing snack dispensers at Trebin.” Her chest fluttered as he stuck a talon in her face, “At the end of this little conversation you’re not going back to a C-Sec holding cell--you’re going wherever the hell I say you are. Now that could be behind bars but it could also be a nutrient vat in the tunnels. Or out the airlock.”

“Fuck you.” Vari sneered, “I don’t know anything.”

He rolled his neck, “I think you might. It could be nothing, but I’d rather take the risk.” He leaned across the table, “I wanted to make it clear what your options were, Vari, and now that I have I’m willing to be friendly. I’ll tell you straight out: this is about the human admiral, Jane Shepard. We know she passed through Trebin six years ago and we know you were employed there at the time. We also know the Broker was involved with her disappearance and you may have helped with that process.

“Where you stand now doesn’t look good: breaking parole twelve years ago was your last strike. According to your file, that was the fourth and final chance you were given under those old leniency laws. A judge could put you away for life, if they felt the punishment fit. A crime is a crime, even if it’s a decade old.” Vari’s pupils dilated as he shrugged, “But if you cooperate we can make things easier for you. Give you a fair chance of parole, send you to a low-security facility. Put a good word in at your trial. It depends on how willing you are to help.”

Her mouth puckered with thought as she considered his offer. He watched her, trying to catch stray emotions. Wassa Vari was not an adept agent of the Broker; she was a career criminal and a pathetic one at that. But Garrus didn’t think she was unintelligent. She’d scraped by unnoticed from the authorities for years and had skulked in foreign offices, stealing information from political powerhouses. Maybe she wouldn’t be trusted with helping the galaxy’s most famous spectre smuggle herself off-world, but she might have been around to witness it.

Wassa raised her eyes, “You’re not the first Citadel flunky to bring me for this.”

“No, I don’t suppose I am.” Garrus’ thoughts buzzed, the previous investigation into Shepard’s whereabouts was an utter failure. The reports transcribed a few witnesses and interrogations, but they were all insubstantial. In truth, the operation had been more of a political gesture than an actual search. A small frenzy briefly captured the public when a tabloid ran an article about Shepard’s disappearance and spread virally across the extranet a few months after she’d left. For about half a year there was media mayhem and many were demanding action from the Alliance and Citadel. Privately, her friends and family knew Jane had gone underground intentionally and a silent agreement went around to keep this quiet unless greater authorities intervened.

Garrus had the feeling Admiral Hackett was one of the Alliance officers Shepard informed about her intentions and was the reason why Earth’s government hadn’t pooled resources into the search. He’d delivered the same news himself to the Council, who accepted the message without protest. Lorn Vilus was not the salarian councilor at the time, but she was steeped in information--he doubted she was ignorant of it. Wassa’s admission was startling, there was no record of her being brought in for questioning. That meant two things: either the files were so sloppily compiled from the earlier investigation that her interview was lost or never recorded, or someone else was conducting their own interrogations under the guise of the Council. Either was possible but the latter made his plates itch.

“Tell me, when was the last time you had a Citadel officer question you about Shepard?”

Vari shrugged, “They didn’t put me in restraints last time.”

“I didn’t hear an answer to my question.” Garrus crossed his arms.

She glared, “Two years ago, maybe three. They came to my house, it was quick. Didn’t inconvenience me as much.”

“I’ll try to remember to work around your schedule the next time we meet up.” Garrus snorted, “And what did you tell them?”

“Couldn’t you look that up yourself? Aren’t they your people?” Wassa was sharp and her eyes centered on his face with needle-like precision, “What the fuck kind of operation is the Citadel running?”

“I like asking questions I know the answer to.” The lie came smooth and quick, “It makes it easier to tell if you’re willing to play ball or not.” Her mouth thinned at his answer but she nodded. He felt her coiling wariness around her like a scarf, it was thick on her face. She pulled against the restraints again, eyeing him while he looked back with an even expression. “So,” he continued, “what did you tell them?”

A lump went down Vari’s throat, “That I didn’t see much. She was there, I know that. She came off a shuttle, but she didn’t go through the regular processing most interstellar passengers deal with. She was disguised, it was just some fake hair or something. But people didn’t realize it was her.”

“What else?”

“She met up with someone, it was an asari. Don’t know her, never seen her again.”

“Describe her.”

“Pretty, young, blue-hued and blue-eyed. Gave her a hug.”

“Huh.” Sounded like Liara, but that made sense. Garrus steepled his fingers, “What happened after that?”

“They left, headed off to the--goddess, I barely remember--the east wing. Don’t know if they stayed there. It’s where the private airships takeoff.” He nodded, that made sense too.

“You didn’t overhear anything--anything at all?”

“No, they were too far. I was working on something, fixing some stupid machine. They were at the other end of the room. I only knew it was her because I’d heard--” she shook her head and smirked, “I’d heard someone famous was coming through to Thessia on one of the big ships. There aren’t a lot of agents at Trebin, but the ones that are talk. They don’t talk to me, usually, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hear.” She drew herself up, chest puffing out, “I install the bugs the Broker sends us, I’m the one who keeps them working. It was my job to make sure to erase any footage of her from the port’s actual security cams.”

“Must have a good sense for tech then.” Garrus angled his head toward her, “The Broker wouldn’t trust some hack to set up their surveillance.” He drew a finger over his omni-tool, and the restraints on her wrists loosened.

“Damn straight.” The compliment melted some of the tension from Vari’s face as she rubbed life back into her hands. “I’m paid jack shit compared to the others but I’m good at my job.” The pride in her voice made Garrus cock his head. For a woman of technological talent it was puzzling she spent her life getting into fights and breaking into houses. There were easier criminal methods for people with her abilities, hacking bank accounts or storefronts for one. But maybe surveillance was her expertise, he didn’t know her story. Garrus did know that whatever shaped Wassa Vari into the woman sitting in front of him had given her a good beating.

He sat back in his chair again, “Is there anything else you can tell me? Did the officers identify themselves? We’d like to make sure this was all according to procedure.”

She shrugged, “Was a human and turian. Don’t remember their names anymore.”

“I see, well--”

“But if you’re willing to work out a better deal I’ll give you access to some of the vids from cameras I’ve got around my house.”

Garrus folded his hands and fought to keep his mandibles from twitching, “You have video of the officers who interviewed you?”

“Sure do.” She crossed her arms over her chest and grinned at him.

“What about at Trebin?”

“Can’t help you with that,” Wassa shook her head. “All the recordings from the port go directly to whatever computer the Broker uses to collect the data. Could be a safe house somewhere, could be the Broker’s personal omni-tool for all I know.”

He scratched the bottom of his chin, “What are you asking for?”

“I want to be put under witness protection.” Wassa held her head high, “If you’re going to throw me in jail anyway, I want to pick where I go.”

“Witness protection.” Garrus raised a brow plate.

“You got me,” Wassa glared, “I know it. You’re going to put me away for what I did before the war. Maybe that’s fair, maybe it’s bullshit. Point is, I’m telling you all this because I want some benefits if I’m going down. The Broker won’t be wasting anything to get me out of here. I’m bottom of the pecking order--but they will make sure to fuck me good if I start giving things away, which I have. So protect me, take some time off my sentence, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I can work with that.” Garrus pushed away from the table, “I’ll bring in some legal counsel, we’ll straighten out the details from there.” He paused, “I’m not making promises, Vari. But we will keep you safe. The rest is going to be about you helping us as much as possible to prove you deserve what we’re offering.”

“So long as I know what I’m getting out of it, fine. Just remember I don’t do shit for free.”

“I’ll remember,” he raised one hand behind him with a final nod, trying not to laugh as he left interrogation with a bounce in his step.

 

* * *

 

Kaidan considered the volus waiting for him. Until about seven or eight years back he’d never held an interrogation before. Becoming a spectre required a fluidity he didn’t need on Alliance jobs. Spectres were soldiers, spies, police officers, diplomats, saboteurs, assassins--he’d become a jack of all trades. Interrogations, however, were still a necessary evil to be  mastered. Humans, turians, and asari were easy. He understood them and their motives, their brain chemistry even. Other species were more difficult. Kaidan agreed to play interrogator to keep a little distance between Novani and the two agents she brought in; he was still working up his confidence.

Vari was cooling in a cell, but Barla Von expected to be on the Citadel for business. His meeting with a krogan client would be a disappointment. Mentally Kaidan went over the points Novani suggested he put pressure on, and the juicy position in the Embassies to entice the banker. All interrogations were negotiations, but this one was a little more businesslike than usual. He breathed, inhaling from his nose and exhaling out his lips. Kaidan retreated to the small corner of his brain every good biotic had, in one form or another. Where the calm was, and discipline--where he went when missions got hairy, or when his life squirmed out of his hands.

When the door hissed open and the clunky patter of volus footsteps sounded on the floor Kaidan opened his eyes. Hands folded in front of him he nodded to the chair opposite him at the table. Barla Von paused, “A spectre?” The banker took only half a moment to readjust himself to the situation, climbing up onto the chair and setting his briefcase on the floor. “You are Kaidan Alenko, the second human spectre. I met you, some years back, while you were under Commander Shepard. When she was a commander, that is. Although I am unsure if the Alliance allows one to retain their rank, admiral or otherwise, when one is retired.”

“Admiral Shepard earned her title; as far as the Alliance is concerned she can keep it.” Kaidan tapped his omni-tool, glancing over a file he has read at least forty times with nonchalance. “You’re Barla Von, currently employed at the interstellar bank at Trebin International. You’ve had connections to the Citadel for most of your life and you’ve also been an agent of the Broker for nearly as long.”

“With the greatest respect, Earth clan, I would like to know why I am sitting here with you instead of the krogan representative I’d arranged to discuss certain loans. I am very interested to know, I have a feeling it will end up being a mutually beneficial discussion.” Barla Von drummed his fingers on the table, his tone amiable.

“I agree,” Kaidan steepled his fingers. “I need information, and since it’s one of your specialties I think you’ll be very helpful in providing it.”

“That depends on the information, and, more importantly, what that information is being used for.” Barla Von glanced around the room, “And, not to be rude, Earth clan, I wonder if you could tell me who it is I am selling this knowledge to--if you are at liberty to divulge such details.” As Kaidan watched a small alert pinged on his omni-tool, which was set to read active programs loading on other nearby devices. Barla Von was recording the entire incident, something he’d anticipated. With a flick of his hand he started a counter-program that set to hacking into the volus’ computer and deleting the contents.

“I am not allowed to share much about my operation, at the moment, but it should be enough for you to know that this is official Citadel business and your cooperation is greatly appreciated.” He was stolid, folding his hands together again.

Barla Von took one, sharp inhale of breath and nodded, “I thought as much.” The air circulating in his suit whooshed quietly as he paused, finally shrugging. “Well, I suppose I will have to hear out your request then. Although I do not enjoy bargaining at such a disadvantage.”

“Thank you for at least doing that, sir.” Kaidan breathed, “I’d like to know about your business on Thessia about six years ago.”

“My business--? Well, I had made arrangements to be transferred there after the reconstruction process had been well along. I could have stayed on the Citadel but--” he took in several breaths of air, “--there were some bad memories here for me, for many people.” Barla Von cocked his head at Kaidan, the gesture in a volus was more like an entire tilt of the body but gave the same air of confused curiosity. “I had been there a few months by that time, if I am recalling correctly. Trebin International is an excellent establishment and I was happy to be working there. I still am.”

“No too happy, I hope.” Kaidan pulled an e-pad up onto the table, “Because I have something here that you might be interested in.” He slid it across the table and Barla Von, standing up on his chair to reach it, glanced at its contents. The volus stopped breathing, he sat down and read the screen again.

After a moment of silence he looked up, “What,” a long whoosh of air gasped between his words, “what is it you want from me, spectre? This is not something that you offer an information broker as payment. It is a bribe. And I do not see--” He took several breaths of air, “Six years ago, you asked?” He muttered something under his breath that Kaidan’s translator didn’t identify and then straightened. “You want to know about your former Commander, I take it?”

“So you know something about where she went?” Kaidan leaned forward, a small pain began to burn in the center of his forehead, a familiar stress headache for an L2 user. He could not banish Jane’s face from his thoughts as he waited for the volus’ answer.

“I know nothing I am willing to offer that might put me at risk of displeasing the Shadow Broker.” But there was a hitch in his voice, a slight break before his long intake of air that told Kaidan Novani’s hunches were right.

“The Shadow Broker won’t be displeased if we’re discreet. As many eyes and ears as they may have you and I both know they’re not infallible. Everything they know is because of their agents, and if you withhold a few details they won’t be the wiser.”

Barla Von’s wispy laugh made his entire body shake, “People who double-cross the Broker end up floating suitless in space.”

“And financial advisors with shady backgrounds don’t get to be ambassadors. But the pad right there might change that.” Kaidan nodded to it and Barla Von’s fingers twitched as he glanced down. “You’ve worked your entire life and now you’re looking for somewhere to spend your twilight years in comfort and notability. I’d think a position in your embassies--especially one like this--would be a fine place to do that.”

The volus exhaled irritably, the sound was like white noise from a defunct radio, “All of those embassy fools are in my pocket--I’ve had a hand in their fiscal affairs for years and that’s not even touching on the secrets I’ve ferreted out.” He waved his hand, shaking his head, “No, I’ve already have influence over the embassy.”

“But that’s all it is: influence.” Kaidan leaned closer, “You’ll never be an equal to any of those politicians and diplomats. You’re a glorified accountant, an information broker. Always the one skulking in the shadows, always expected to play the middleman and lackey. They may owe you money, you may know their secrets, but you’re never going to be on the same level. Power, the kind of sway you can hold up to the light of day, isn’t something you possess.”

He couldn’t see Barla Von’s eyes, something about volus that unnerved him, but he watched the way the man sat frozen in his chair, his metal claws fluttering like a mad butterfly. Kaidan waited, first a minute, then another five, until at last the volus stirred from his reverie. He centered his gaze on Kaidan’s face, “I will need a credible reason for such a promotion to keep the Shadow Broker from becoming suspicious. I will also need some sort of official documentation that this is going to happen before I consent to give you anything.”

“We’ve taken steps already, sir. But I’m going to need to make sure that whatever you’ve got to share with us is worth a position in the embassy.”

“Of course,” Barla Von nodded. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Once you have gathered what I’ve asked for I’ll provide what you want.”

“Any question I have--you’ll answer?” His headache was getting worse, Kaidan forced his breathing to become regular and trance-like. Keeping calm was the best he could do to keep the pain manageable.

“Anything pertaining to the admiral, yes. I won’t incriminate myself, spectre.”

“We aren’t interested in you, Von.”

“No one ever really is,” the volus chuckled. “It’s why I’ve done so well.” He turned in his chair, dropping carefully to the floor and picked up his briefcase as he rounded the table to shake Kaidan’s hand. “I will be looking forward to receiving confirming documentation from your people, spectre.”

“And we thank you for your cooperation, sir.” Kaidan gripped the little, metal paw. His headache was bursting into little stars in his brain and he collapsed back into his chair as the door slid shut behind the volus’ portly gait.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not updating last week, I found myself busier than usual. Thank you for reading and especially to those leaving comments or kudos.

**-000- Six Years Ago -000-**

Jane wiped the mist of sweat from her forehead. Her arms ached and her calves were screaming. She arched her spine, fists pressing into the knot in her lower back. "I need to start lifting weights again.” A hum caught her ear and she turned south, watching a small dot of blue grow larger and larger until it was a car zipping above the desert landscape.

Her first reaction was to go inside for a gun but she dismissed the notion immediately. She recognized the vehicle, it belonged to a man in town named Daniel Tringali. The car glided down and parked a few yards away from her pre-fab. Tringali climbed out the driver's side and waved, Jane waved back. She could already see the rings of sweat on his shirt as he approached. "Miss Cooke," Tringali called, "it's good to see you."

She cracked her neck, "You're Daniel Tringali, I think?"

"I am, I am." He was an older man with a sun-weathered face of wrinkles and liver spots and a nose like the nub of a mushroom. He had a lopsided smile which revealed a few missing teeth and was bald. "Have I come while you're busy?" He nodded at the heavy pile of burlap sacks and gardening equipment.

"No, I'm just doing a little pet project. Thought it'd be nice to have a cactus garden, something I can grow out here without building a greenhouse. Can I offer you something to drink?" Jane nodded at her apartment. "You're welcome inside."

"Well now, I was hoping to discuss something with you. I am sorry about interrupting your construction."

"It's no trouble, really." Jane led him into her house and poured him a glass of seltzer and ice. "What can I do for you?" They sat opposite her coffee table and she looked at him over steepled hands.

"Miss Cooke, I hope I'm not being too presumptuous, but I heard from Carla in town that you used to work for the Alliance."

"I did."

"Well firstly I'd like to thank you for your service. But I'm here because I heard one of your duties before the war was surveying geological resources."

"Yeah," Jane smiled. "It's something I enjoyed." A laugh almost escaped her lips before she caught it. Everyone on the Normandy knew about the Commander's geology field trips. She couldn't count how many complaints she heard about scanning and tagging mining resources. Garus was the worst, he would sigh loudly for hours while they schlepped along in the Mako. But she had the best finds when he went and insisted on his presence. Of course when her squad wasn't complaining about doing 'drone jobs' they were whining about her driving. Jane covered her widening grin with a palm.

"That's wonderful news!" Tringali's hands clapped as he gave her another lopsided smile. "Look, if you're interested I've got this position open for someone who has your qualifications. Most of the work is done by scanning bots nowadays but we still need flesh and blood people to oversee the finds. If you have any experience repairing our equipment too I'd be happy to offer you good money.

"Now, I've only come nosing around because Carla mentioned you were looking for something to keep you busy, so I hope you consider the offer." Tringali spoke quickly, reminding her a little of Mordin. "All I'd need is some kind of verification, a resume or something. Not that I don't trust you but now that we've got the extranet working again the big shots in the company want to make sure we're doing things by the book." He held up his hands before she could speak. "Don't go and decide anything right now. Give it a couple of days then come and find me in town. I'll be around in my usual places, just ask Carla and she'll send you right over. I appreciate your time and hospitality, Miss Cooke."

He was a man of frantic energy; Jane barely had time to wish him a good day before he was out the door and driving away. She watched his vehicle vanish in the distance, rolling her shoulders as she mulled over his visit. She went back to work, digging up a good foot of soil for her garden. When the sun sank low over the horizon Jane limped back into the apartment.

After showering she uncurled on her couch and brought her omni-tool up. She punched in a few things on the screen and waited; after a moment an automated voice piped up. "Greetings, this is the office of Nelita Collissi. If you would like to schedule an appointment please look over our available dates to arrange a meeting. If you are calling to personally message Miss Collissi, please hang up and try her private number. If you are--"

"Hello, yes, this is Nelita's old friend Ashley Cooke and I would like to let her know that I need to speak to her regarding our collaboration in the Knossos System."

The voice paused and she heard a quiet buzz as the call transferred. "Greetings Miss Cooke," Glyph intoned. "Miss Collissi is pleased you're messaging her. Is there anything I can assist with?"

"Yes, could you ask Miss Collissi to forward a copy of my resume from the Alliance--including my history of geological surveying and general engineering background with credible references? It would be extremely helpful since I can't access my old files anymore."

"I will relay the information to her and I'm sure we'll have it to you soon. Shall I relay any other messages?"

"Tell her I miss her, and I'd like to hear from her sometime when she's got the chance." Jane exhaled, blinking at her ceiling.

"Of course. Have an excellent evening, Miss Cooke."

"Thanks, Glyph. Tell her the same for me, would you?" Jane disconnected the call and burrowed deeper into the cushion of her couch. Tomorrow she'd work on the garden a bit more, maybe lay out the plastic lining and tiles. Her cacti were due for delivery in a week or two, she needed to have the soil prepared by then. Jane turned over, lying facedown, inhaling the clean linen smell of the pillows. She fell asleep there, lost in a slumber deeper and more peaceful than she could remember knowing.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-** ****

Liara looked up from her omni-tool as it blinked rapidly and shut down with a plaintive beep; Matriarch Aethyta’s computer screen flashed away as she raised both eyebrows at her daughter and lowered her arm back to the table. “You hacked my omni-tool.” Liara frowned, “You are fortunate I’m not using my usual device or you’d be dealing with a number of nasty counter-viruses I’ve programmed into my firewall.”

“How about ‘Sorry, dad, I’ll keep my promise about no work on the family vacation.’” Aethyta sank into the back of her chair, “You get more and more like Nezi every time I see you. Most of the time that makes me proud, right now I’m just kinda pissed off.” There was a faint grin haunting the edges of her father’s mouth.

“I am sorry, dad. Being an information broker--”

“Isn’t the end of all goddessdamned life. We already survived that, Ari. Take a few breathers before you wake up one day and realize everyone you love is wrinkled and hot under the plates when you call because it’s been four decades since you’ve talked. Couple more centuries and you’ll be a matron. Learn a lesson from your deadbeat dad and think about making a life you can tolerate in your twilight years now instead of later.” Aethyta reached across the table and squeezed Liara’s hand; Liara watched the laugh lines deepen around her father’s face as she smiled.

A cold finger touched the back of her neck--Aethyta was eight hundred and forty-three in galactic standard years. A healthy asari could expect to live late in to her ninth century, perhaps beyond if she was lucky. According to the census taken after the Reaper Wars by Thessia’s government there were currently no matriarchs alive over the age of nine hundred. Liara’s father was among the rare few who survived the war, and had maybe another two centuries left in her. Two more centuries to know each other, if she didn’t count all the time she spent on the job. Then it was more like one, or less.

Pain crept into the crannies of her brain, seizing up her thoughts, and Liara sat in silence while her father watched the parade going on in the streets below. Her father had been particularly philosophical the past year or so and Liara noticed. She suspected it was Aethyta’s way of giving her the asari to asari version of the lifespan talk. It was one she found herself resisting, despite the long lectures and debates she’d known growing up about mortality and the unstoppable march of time. “Dad?” she hesitated, then reached over to touch her father’s wrist, “Maybe we should talk about getting the family together.”

“What family?” Aethyta glanced at her daughter, her face furrowing with confusion.

“You’ve mentioned at least one half-sister to me before. It would be nice to meet her. And maybe any other half-sisters I have you haven’t told me about yet.” It would do her father good, she thought, to gather her children around her. She wasn’t dying, and wouldn’t be for some time if the goddess was willing, but Liara liked the idea of a family reunion. Maybe she could get to know another side of her father though the sisters Aethyta birthed over the long span of her life.

“Well I--” Aethyta’s face grew dark. “Some of them are gone, Little Bird. Most of them, actually.” Liara lowered her head, she’d learned that during the war when she hacked her father’s extranet account. “But it’s not a bad idea. Suppose you should meet your sisters, especially now that there are less of them.” She nodded her head, “But only if you’re going to put your damn omni-tool down for more than a few minutes. Otherwise I’m gonna end up throwing a table.”

Her cheeks tinged with purple, Liara nodded, “Sorry dad.” As the words left her lips a small vibration on her hip told her she’d just received an urgent message. The pager was nearly archaic in its simplicity but reliable and difficult to trace. She considered making an excuse to sneak away to the restroom but her father’s affable smile was pinning her in place. Inwardly she sighed; Liara smiled back and let the pager vibrate. Glyph was sorting incoming information she could check later if something truly demanding came up. Nothing was so alarming that she couldn’t handle it in the evening.

 

* * *

 

 Barla Von waited. His wife came to check on him twice but gave up and went to bed. He’d ignored several calls, four business and one personal. He waited for an answer to the message sent hours ago on the encrypted channel he used to communicate with agents of the Shadow Broker. He got an immediate response, and was promised word would be sent to his cryptic employer. He sat sweating in his bedclothes, woven from a fine material imported all the way from Earth called silk. He breathed deep, smelling the subtle perfume his wife wore--a scent made to resemble her favorite Irune-native flower. At home he was usually relaxed, relieved from wearing his cumbersome suit and free to breathe air that did not sicken him. Tonight he felt ill anyway, awaiting orders from the murky figure he’d given sporadic allegiance to for a good twenty years of his life.

He could not know when an answer would come, it was always thus with the Shadow Broker. Working in information meant three a.m. calls, encrypted documents, and discreet meetings in grubby corners of the Wards. But payments were timely and substantial, the Broker had paid his university fees when he’d been a young intern leaking company information, they had provided the seed money he used to start his first financial consulting office and was a constant, comforting presence in all his major, backroom dealings. His life was built on stolen secrets and his loyalty, epicureal for most, was firmly in the Broker’s camp.

It was he who the Broker trusted to siphon Jane Shepard’s credits into a secret bank account even he had only the rudest knowledge of. It was he the Broker contacted to arrange transport off Thessia when the admiral passed quietly through. Barla Von knew he was a single link of many but he was proud of his connections to the ruthlessly enigmatic Shadow Broker. Even in his graying years as a well-respected consultant he was willing to put aside an all but Council-sanctioned promotion to the Vol Protectorate’s embassies, a position he’d never believed within his grasp. The reward, he assumed, would be generous.

Von had spent his life knowing how to play the Broker’s game: always be useful and never be a liability. He felt, as he had felt many times before, caught up in an affair he could only partially comprehend. Like an ant trying to read a giant’s handwriting. He was content with his place, it had kept him safe before and he was confident it would continue to so long as he was cautious.

So he waited, sweat beading on his face and soaking into the soft brush of his silk pajamas against his thick, damp skin.

 

* * *

 

Garrus’ breath hit the back of his teeth, whistling in and out with every rise of his chest. The three of them were crowded around his omni-tool; he’d just received the vid recordings from Wassa Vari’s home surveillance system. They sent a few C-Sec officers to Thessia to locate and confiscate the original, destroying extra copies they came across. He was sure Vari had some other backups squirreled away, but left it be. The officers came back ruffled and bleary eyed, describing Vari’s house as a labyrinthine mass of recording equipment and dirty laundry.

The interior was a riot of computer screens corresponding to the various video feeds, some of them were hooked up to bugs at Trebin, others were hacked street cams and the rest were trained around strategic points in and outside the house. They found the recording of Vari’s earlier interview with some trouble, it took a few days of sifting through the massive reserves of data before it was discovered even with instructions on its location. Now it was loading on his omni-tool. Kaidan’s brow furrowed a deep crinkle in his forehead and Novani worried at one of her sleeves.

After a moment a picture flickered on: an overhead view of a grimy porch. The recording was over ten hours long, and Garrus fast forwarded the vid, watching the shadows sway as the day drew along. Four hours in, two shapes emerged from outside the frame and zipped up the steps to Vari’s door. Each of them felt their bodies twitch: Garrus’ mandibles pumped, Novani’s eyes fluttered, Kaidan’s shoulders tensed. 

Novani leaned forward and waved at Garrus’ screen, pausing the vid and enlarging the two figures. “Who is that? They’re wearing C-Sec uniforms. Damn, did this only record them in profile?”

“Give it a moment, they might turn to a better angle.” Garrus shooed her hand away and let the picture run. It was a human and turian, as he’d been told. The turian was female and small in stature, she was emaciated and had dark red lines radiating from her eyes. The human was male; he was stocky and not much taller than the turian. He had a dark complexion, black hair shaved close to his skull.

“Those uniforms look real,” he squinted. “You know, we never brought anyone in for impersonation while I was at C-Sec. The charges were stiff.”

“Jail time, minimum.” Novani agreed, “Plus fines.”

“How hard is it to get a C-Sec uniform?” Kaidan asked.

“Damn difficult,” Garrus tilted his head; the pair was knocking on Vari’s door. It cracked slightly and a bloodshot eye peeked out. “There’s strict protocols dictating how to properly dispose of old Citadel blues. Officers are expected to keep a good lock on anything that identifies them as C-Sec.” Several minutes of conversation passed in the video before Vari’s door closed and the imposters turned to leave. Garrus paused the recording, “Let’s get a closeup on their faces and put it in the Citadel’s records, see if anything turns up.”

“She couldn’t give us audio?” Novani’s lips pursed at the fuzzy picture.

“Apparently she deletes the sound to keep herself from being incriminating. I’d like to send a second team to her place, though. I’m just not sure if we want to risk someone noticing.”

“We can’t fret about the Broker if it’s going to hinder the investigation.” She shook her head at them.

“It's not just about the Broker. The Councilor made it clear we’re to be discreet as we can be,” Kaidan interjected. “We should think about our options before sending a whole team to investigate a low-level criminal’s house.”

Moraina shrugged; she straightened and pulled up her omni-tool, “You’re right but we need more leads. And I’m curious why these two are questioning an agent about the Admiral’s whereabouts. If they were part of the official investigation then it’s nothing but--” she paused and glanced at Garrus. “When did Vari say this was from?”

“Just a few years ago, the information from the vid confirms it. I am having it combed over by some techs to see if anything’s been overlaid to make it just look like that but I didn’t think she was lying.” He closed the recording and looked at Kaidan, who was staring at his feet with a pointed intensity. “Went back and pulled the files anyway but there’s nothing about Wassa Vari in them.”

“It’s not bad cover,” Kaidan’s eyes narrowed. “It was big news, Shepard disappearing. People wouldn’t be surprised about a couple officers with questions about her. Although that far after the investigation is less believable.” He lifted his eyes and leveled them on Garrus, “What did she tell them?”

“Nothing that we don’t know. She heard Shepard passed through Trebin and might have seen her in a crowd. Nothing substantial. She told me she was just relieved when the officers accepted that and left.”

“C-Sec would have done a follow-up,” Novani tapped her chin. “At least a competent C-Sec agent would.”

“We can’t make real assumptions until we run their profiles through Citadel databases, but I don’t think either of these two will show up as officers.” He turned from Kaidan to Novani, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“We just stumbled in on another investigation that could be years ahead of us.” Moraina’s mouth drew open and stretched across her teeth in a smirk, she laughed through her snarl. “I’ve got tingles.”

“Let’s find out who they are.” Kaidan was already at the door, “Send me their faces, I’m leaving for C-Sec HQ. We can have it run through a lip-reading program too.”

“I’m going with you,” Garrus stood. “Novani, can you send a report to the Councilor?”

“Yes, but I’m going dark for a bit. I need to check the status of that bug I piggybacked at Trebin. Use the emergency channel if you really need me.”

“When are we meeting up again?” Garrus fingered the pistol holstered on his hip.

Novani paused to think, eyes closing for a moment. “Twenty hours from now. I’ll see you back here at the Tower. If I’m not there to meet you within the hour come looking.” She followed them out the door, waving once before stalking down another hall.

Kaidan and Garrus turned, each of their steps clipped the floor with a grim sort of urgency. He saw Kaidan’s hand straying to the small of his back, reaching for but never touching his gun. “Who’s looking for her?” Garrus wondered out loud.

They glanced at each other and Kaidan shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re sly enough to masquerade as C-Sec officers, that worries me. ”

His brow plates narrowed into a frown, “We should consider splitting the team: two of us keep focusing on Shepard and the third on whoever the hell these two are.”

“It’s not a bad plan,” Kaidan kept his face angled forward as they walked. “But I have a feeling we’d end up in a fight.”

“Who?”

“You, me. Over which of us gets to stay on with Novani and keep looking for the Admiral.”

Garrus’ step faltered but Alenko didn’t pause. He threw himself forward to keep up, eyes trained on Kaidan’s expression. It was blank but he could see the tension threatening to spill forward; his jaw was clenched and there was a pallor to his face. They stepped out of the building and Garrus motioned him toward his car. They climbed in and he started the engine, squinting at his old friend as they launched out of the Citadel Tower parking lot. “Kaidan,” he began, “what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” Alenko leaned back into the car seat with a long heave of breath. “I keep thinking about her, how we never patched things properly. That maybe if I see Shepard again I could have some real closure. And this divorce, this goddamn divorce.” He swiveled his head to Garrus, “I thought it was callous when Xao asked me to sign some pre-nups but Jesus Christ am I glad we did.”

“Things moving along?” His talons dug into the armrests of his chair, the vehicle’s VI was routed for HQ and drove at a brisk pace.

“She’s been trying to drag it out, foolish as that sounds. We didn’t have kids, pets, or properties together but she’s going for the jugular, like I’ve taken everything. I told her to fuck off yesterday after she made some snide pass and she spent almost an hour screaming. I just--” He shrugged, “I’m trying to remember what it was like to be in love, Vakarian. And I keep coming back to Jane.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’re, what, still in love with her?” Garrus shook his head, “Alenko, that’s bullshit.”

“I’m not--I’m not trying to tell you that. I have a lot of regrets right now.” His face was stone, “And part of me is wondering at which point in my life did I screw myself?”

Garrus sighed, turning forward again. “Kaidan, if I knew anything about keeping it together I’d tell you.”

A mirthless laugh bounced off the windshield, “And that’s why you and me are friends.”

 

* * *

 

Liara’s fist cracked the tabletop in a flash of blue, power radiating from her hand. “Is there never a moment, even with my family?” Her eyes lifted to a holographic screen Glyph projected, Feron watched her grimace at him from it. “How long did the message sit?

“Two days, it’s fine. We’re taking care of it.”

“Two days is a catastrophe.” She got up, paced, sat down, and got up again. Glyph trailed behind, hovering in gentle circles around her maddened strides. “I should have never--but my father--” Liara shook the crowded thoughts from her head and turned to Feron, “How quickly can we get to Vari?”

“We’re not, she’s been placed into the Citadel’s witness protection program. Right now she could be floating in any of their prisons under a new identity. Maybe they’re hiding her among the civilians. It’s going to take a few weeks to penetrate their records, security’s tighter since the war.”

It wasn’t until she returned that Liara received the hundred and seventy-six messages Glyph had archived from Feron. She wanted to throw her desk against the wall; Liara knew she was a fool to believe she had the luxury of enjoying a family vacation. She chose this life but it startled her at times to realize she would probably spend the next eight or nine centuries devoting all her waking moments to being the Shadow Broker.

“We need to plant more people in the Tower. Let Barla Von know he is to accept their offer. I want agents shadowing every step they make. I want Wassa Vari tracked down and silenced,” her eyes closed. “I don’t want to hear about her again.” Liara’s body stiffened, she took a deep, gasping breath. “If they have Vari--they might know--” Her fist bored a hole in her desk; the entire room rattled as a small wave of biotic energy blew across it. “Why didn’t I remember earlier?” Feron’s eyes followed her as she paced, “I’ve been careless, she should have been taken care of. Her house searched, her records purged.” Her gaze fell on Glyph, “When did the Spectres discover our agents? The ones at Trebin are supposed to be secure.”

“I’m looking into it now. I think the Council may have set Moraina Novani on us. She’s got a lot of connections on Thessia, and with the STG.”

“Moraina Novani.” Liara’s brain revved as she tried to remember the asari Feron described. “She’s one of the pre-war Spectres, isn’t she? A huntress with several centuries of experience. Someone we need to treat cautiously.” She sat in her chair, resting her chin on two balled fists. “Who else is working with her?”

“From what we’ve been able to pull from security cameras around the Tower’s plaza, she’s usually in the company of Garrus Vakarian and Kaidan Alenko.”

“Of course.” Liara nodded slowly, piecing the new information together. She rolled her thoughts around in her head like a worry stone in her hand. “Do we know who set them on this assignment? Was it an unanimous interest on part of the Council or are we looking at a singular Councilor’s pet project?”

“We don’t know yet. The whole thing has been blacked out on every official front. I don’t know if the Council even talks about it, communications between the Spectres and the Tower are sparse, maybe nonexistent. All I can say for sure is that for the past five weeks a courier has been sent from their team to the Tower. Whatever message is carried there isn’t hackable, they may be writing it out by hand--I don’t know. The courier is escorted by a pair of C-Sec officers. I’ve tried to arrange for one of our people to take the job but it looks like Vakarian chooses the escort himself. Do you want me to arrange for an interception?”

“Not yet. I need to--” Liara let her head fall back and she tried to breathe. “If they picked up Vari then they may know about the others. I need to warn Garrus and Kaidan to stay out of it. They won’t listen but--” She paused, half-lidded eyes considering the small trickle of blood on the back of her hand where her biotics hadn’t stopped a splinter of glass from ripping the skin open. “I should at least try to convey the importance of what’s happening and hope they understand.” She looked up to Feron’s waiting expression, “How is she?”

“Shepard’s fine. I checked and then double-checked to see if anyone’s made real progress on finding her. They haven’t. She’s still on Intai’sei and she’s safe. I talked to her two weeks ago. She’s asking about you again.”

“I know,” Liara rubbed her forehead. “Thank you, Feron. And forget about silencing Vari, she’s not really a threat to anyone now. I was overreacting.” She pursed her lips, “But I do want someone to go to her house and scrub it. Why wasn’t that done earlier?”

“The supervising agent at Trebin flagged her as low priority.” Feron inclined his head, “Want me to reassign them to one of our tundra outposts?”

“Their negligence has been costly, feel free to do what you see fit. I’ll be messaging you soon with further instructions.”

“Understood.” Glyph disconnected the call and his face fell to darkness. The room dimmed in Liara’s vision as she slumped in her chair.

 

* * *

  

“What do you think?” Kaidan angled his eyes at Garrus while they both regarded a young C-Sec officer over crossed arms.

“I think this is exactly what we thought would happen.”

“Agreed,” Kaidan nodded. “So what are we doing about it?”

They had both faces of the impersonators run through the Citadel’s database. Billions of individuals were catalogued there but not, apparently, their two targets. That was an auspicious discovery in itself, and both men mulled over its significance while the young officer glanced between them with skittish, darting eyes.

Garrus pushed himself away from the desk he leaned on and nodded, “Thanks for the help, Washington. And note anyone who comes around asking what we needed help with, would you?”

“Yes sir!”

They left the young man at his desk and paced back to Garrus’ vehicle. “I have a feeling we’re skating close to a call from Liara.” Kaidan reclined into his carseat, “You think we should have been a little more discreet about that?”

“No, we know she’s going to find out about Vari soon enough. And we were as discreet as we could be. I called ahead and ordered level three security.”

“Ah. I was wondering why that kid was so nervous.”

Garrus laughed, “Yeah, Washington’s a decent officer, but this is probably the first time he’s essentially been given a gag order.”

“Probably the first time he’s been in a room with two Spectres breathing down his neck too.” They chuckled but Kaidan’s expression soured, “It takes a special sort of dedication to make sure your face never shows up in as big a database as the Citadel’s.”

“It’s something I think the Shadow Broker is capable of, but it wouldn’t make sense."

“No,” Kaidan agreed. “But we’re dealing with some other entity who has the resources to keep their people out of the system while they’re hunting for Shepard. And we don't know why.”

“Well they can’t have found her yet, Liara would make sure of that.” He pulled into the parking garage of Kaidan’s apartment. “I’m going to see if any of my contacts can cast a net out for these two. At least we’ve got their faces now, though if they’ve got some sort of ongoing countermeasure to hide their identities we're in trouble.”

“I’ll call my contacts too, I have this techie friend I’ve got questions for.”

“Let’s get Novani in on this as soon as we meet up.”

“All right, I’ll see you soon.” Kaidan nodded goodbye and climbed out of the car.

 

* * *

 

 The call came as soon as he was back in his apartment. It was an unknown ID and Garrus opened it as he sat on the couch. Liara’s face loomed on his television; they blinked at one another wordlessly while Grix nuzzled his legs. “T’Soni, I was hoping this call wouldn’t happen for another few weeks.” He scratched the ridge of Grix’s spine and watched Liara shake her head at him.

“It should have been sooner, I’m afraid there were a few slips on my part.”

“With Wassa Vari? Yeah, she’s been useful. We've got her somewhere safe.”

“I’m not coming after her, Garrus.” Liara cast her gaze down and a sour twitch of her lips wrinkled the edges of her mouth. 

“I didn’t think you were, but we’re not going to let you find her.”

“Vari is unimportant now, in the scheme of things. But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to keep her secure.”

Garrus narrowed his eyes, Liara was a soft spoken woman. But there was some tautness to her voice and a darkness in her eyes that made her words a bare whisper over the speakers. “Was that all you wanted to call about, Liara?”

A humorless chuckle crackled in his living room and she smiled at him with too many teeth. “I was hoping to talk about Shepard.”

“We’re not going to stop the investigation.”

“Garrus,” she whispered, “I am asking you to stop. I am asking you to stop as Liara T’Soni, as your friend. I am begging you not to pursue this.”

“Liara, you need to tell me why.” He stood and walked closer to the screen, turning his head from side to side as he watched her frown. “You’ve been keeping Shepard from us for over half a decade. I have no idea what she’s been up to, what her health is like, if she’s happy. She is my best friend and I know nothing about the past six years of her life.”

A jagged flash of anger ripped across Liara’s face. “You go on as if this were all fueled by goodwill and affection. This is Spectre business, Garrus. I don’t trust Spectre operations. The Council has no right to order her back on duty just because they’ve decided they need her again. Shepard is not a resource or a weapon. She is our friend and she is happy where she is.”

“If I believed you were telling me the whole truth I’d have given this up but I can almost smell the deceit, T’Soni. This business with Wassa Vari--who the hell are those two fake officers?” His arms moved in sharp, jerky gestures while Grix paced around his feet. Liara’s mouth tightened and he threw a finger at her. “Do you even know?”

“Garrus--I am not doing this because I am selfish or a fool. I am keeping her safe and that is easier to do if no one knows where she is. You must believe me.”

“I won’t.” His voice was steel, “Until I can see her face to face again and hear from her own mouth that she wants nothing to do with the galaxy anymore, I won’t stop.” He moved closer to the screen, eyeballing Liara’s face with his teeth bared. “If you get to Kaidan I’ll go on without him--but you’re not going to convince me. And if she is in danger and Shepard knew about it she’d be taking action, not hiding. So what are you keeping from me--from her?”

The stretch of silence that hung between them was like an open wound. At last Liara lowered her eyes, “I can’t tell you.”

“Then I’m not going to cooperate.”

“Yes, I suspected you wouldn’t.” Her hands went up and ran alongside her scalp in short, frantic strokes. “But I wanted to try. Very well.” She stopped and looked him squarely in the eye, “Things will be very difficult from now on.” The call ended and his screen blinked to black.

Garrus was already on his omni-tool, “Kaidan, I got a call from Liara.” He paused and nodded, “Yes, let’s start gathering people now. I’m going to see her mother as soon as possible. All right, good. Let me call Novani to reschedule our meeting--no, no. I’ll handle it. Start with Joker, maybe. I’m sending a message now; is Admiral Shepard still stationed on Earth? Then I’ll be on the next shuttle.” He hung up and went into his study, poking through his emergency pack a last time while Grix nosed his heels. He stood and grabbed the Tuchanka picture off his desk, stuffing it in the duffel bag.

“Sorry girl,” he murmured to Grix, crouching down to scratch her head at the front door. “The Lees will take good care of you while daddy’s out.” He’d already sent a message to his friends and they were coming for Grix in the morning. “Behave and there’ll be fresh pyjak when I get home.” She rumbled and lapped at his face, making him laugh. “Goodbye pretty girl.” He could hear her claws scratching at the door after it closed behind him. Garrus exhaled, throwing the duffel bag onto his shoulder and walked down the hall to the elevator.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, just a quick explanation for anyone who reads the chapter notes: I apologize for how sporadic updates have been. I've used up my buffer of written pages and am trying to make a goal of updating once a week. I'd rather have a chapter with a consistent length over a shorter one, however, so I may not always meet that goal. Thank you for reading and especially to anyone who leaves comments and kudos.

**-000- Six Years in the Past -000-**

"I wasn't expecting you," Jane's towel wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, her hair was still dripping from the shower. "I thought Liara was coming herself when she said she was going to 'check in' on me. It's good to see you, though. I wasn't sure what happened to you after the war." Her eyes settled on him, "You should sit down, you don't have to leave right away, do you?"

Feron glanced at the chair her hand extended to and leaned back in it. "Sorry, didn't mean to seem so stiff."

"You're treating this like work," Jane's mouth twitched into a smile. "Is Liara making this work?" He heard a soft accusation coloring her question. She stalked the room, eyes jumping to the window and back to him before she turned to her kitchen. "Let me get you something to drink, or eat, if you'd like. I haven't had many guests around. I have to go into town to see anyone."

Feron hesitated, "You don't--" he cocked his head at her, "Water is fine. Or whatever you have on you."

"I've got alcohol," Jane grinned. "Or is there no drinking on the job?"

"It's not a job," he said after a pause. "It's a favor for a friend."

"Then don't feel like you need to be formal, Feron. You did save my life." She pulled two glasses from her cupboard and pinched them in one hand while the other reached for a bottle corked with a glass stopper shaped like Earth.

"And then you saved mine." His eyes followed her back as she sat down and set all three on the table, opening the bottle and pouring out a deep brown, amber liquor that turned red in the fading sunlight.

"Sure, but it took me almost three years to do it." Jane lifted her gaze from the bottle and met his, "I never forgot that it took so long, and what that meant for you." She lifted the bottle away from the glasses and set it down on the small coffee table between them. "And it changed Liara, made her the way she is now. I try not to let my debts eat away at me, but it was different for her. All of that business with the old Broker and the Illusive Man," Jane lifted the glass to her lips, staring at Feron over its edge. "Sometimes it feels like it swallowed her whole."

Feron put the glass to his nose, inhaling the scent. Jane set hers down, "Sorry, that got melodramatic. I've just been dwelling lately."

"On what?" He eyed the dark coloration, still breathing in its aroma.

"On everything--and that should be okay for you to drink, it's bourbon. Human alcohol. I shared some once with another drell and he didn't drop dead after the first few sips." Her laugh was infectious and he grinned back.

"You're talking about Thane Krios. He was part of your crew when you were going after the Collectors."

"Yeah," Jane nodded, turning to stare at her hands. Her fingers uncurled slowly as she remembered, "We were together, at the time." Her eyelids lowered, the smile that ghosted past her face was secretive and brief.

Feron sipped his drink, eyes never leaving Jane, "Thane Krios was a man of great stature. By the time he was fifteen his name was already whispered of in Kahje's dark corners." He laughed, "Thane Krios always sounded like an admonition to me."

"Did your parents give you up to the Compact?" Jane's legs curled under her, "I sort of assumed, given your skill set."

"I didn't stay in the profession for long. They trained me as a child but when I was in my teens I was granted more freedom, and I ran. I started working as a freelance mercenary for a time. Then I fell into the business of secrets." He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, "You know the rest."

She nodded, "Working for the Broker has its benefits, I hope."

"It does," Feron tipped the rest of the bourbon into his mouth and wiped his lips. "I enjoy it, now that I don't worry about my employer murdering me. I considered going into corporate espionage after Liara became the Broker but I can't imagine doing something so boring."

Jane laughed, "I've never thought about different qualities of cloak and dagger work. I suppose you've handled things much more exciting than patents or trade secrets."

"I handled you," Feron nodded at her. "And it changed my life." He smiled, "Liara once told me you have that effect."

"I don't generally mean to alter destinies," Jane fingered her glass, sliding the pads of her hands along its sides. "It's something that just happens. There are a lot of damaged lives I have to answer for." She picked up the bottle and poured another drop of bourbon into the glass, mouth downturned. “I'm going to be rude and tell you not to ply me with any bullshit about how I saved the galaxy. I've had enough of people thinking it will comfort me." She swallowed her drink, "Sorry."

"I didn't come for that, Shepard." Feron shook his head. "I came to see how you were settling in. You're satisfied here?"

"Yes, I've been enjoying the anonymity. I've got a job and I like the people in town." She reached for the bottle again but stopped, frowning, and set her cup down on the table. "I go to the local bar on Fridays and drink till I'm pleasantly inebriated and have the automated driver take me home. Everyone in Yamada likes retired Lieutenant Ashley Cooke." Her head rolled onto one shoulder while her arms encircled her curled legs. "Weekends I take my guns out and do exercises where no one can see me." She scratched her shoulder, "I'm thinking of taking a quick trip off-world for a job I found on this extranet bounty board. There's a bad infestation of klixen on some colony. Thought I could get a little action."

"Liara won't like that." Feron tapped a screen on his omni-tool, "She'll say it's too risky, you might get recognized."

"Liara isn't my keeper. I appreciate her helping me disappear but I'm not going to blow my cover. And I can't just sit on my laurels getting soft out here. The Alliance officer in me won't allow it."

"You left the Alliance," Feron said, his brow knotting on his forehead.

"Not because I wanted to stop finding trouble." Jane straightened and her feet dangled back over the carpet. "I just wanted it to stop being the kind of trouble an admiral deals with. I'm done with Citadel politicking and all of the shit that came with being a spectre. I'm done with interviews and bureaucracy." She stood and stalked away to the kitchen, dropping her glass in the sink with a face blackened by anger. "I'm not staying here forever, I'm not stupid enough to think they'll leave me alone forever, but I needed time to process it. To mourn things properly."

She spun on her heel and paced back to the living room where she glared at Feron. "I know I'm being selfish, but after the war ended I thought I might have some peace. Hell," her glower deepened, "I thought I'd be dead. But instead I lived. Then came the rebuilding process." She threw up an arm, "and before the bandages were even off I was back to work. I could have said no--I should have said no--but I didn't. It was all so--" she shook her head. "There was finding food and shelter for the survivors. Re-establishing communications with the colonies. Analyzing data on our resources, what we had left and what we lost. Fuck," Jane covered her eyes. "Dealing with the bodies, the literal mountains of bodies. Disposing of Reapers and--"

Her ranting deflated as she caught sight of the setting sun, sinking into the orange mountains through the glass walls of her apartment. Her shoulders lowered, her hands fell back to her sides. "I did as much as I could and when I saw it was all going along smoothly I bolted." Jane returned to her seat on the couch, her eyes rested on his face but were trapped in some other revery. "Sorry."

Feron shifted in his seat, keeping his gaze trained on the bourbon, "I told Liara she should have come herself."

"It's fine. She's busy, I know that." Jane shrugged and with a practiced indifference she gave him a blinding smile. "I'm glad she sent you. I honestly didn't know what happened to you after the war. It's good to meet up with someone else who's odds were almost as bad as mine were. Makes me feel a bit less like a goddamn miracle." Her head angled at him, "Are you going to keep checking in on me?"

"If you're alright with it." Feron folded his hands together, his glass of bourbon empty on the table.

"I am." Jane smiled again, this time with less teeth and softer eyes. "I feel like you and I should be friends."

“You honor me, Shepard,” Feron replied; his tone was mild but he had a solemnity in his eyes that made her laugh.

“I’m not proposing marriage, Feron. I just want to be your friend.” She reached over and slapped him on the shoulder. “Bring something to drink next time Liara sends you to keep tabs on me. I like trying new stuff, especially if it’s got a good kick. I could never get Thane to go bar hopping with me so you’re going to be my intro to drell liquor. Besides, you owe me for the bourbon. This shit’s expensive--I stole it from the Illusive Man’s office after I kicked Kai Lang’s ass. Did Liara ever tell you anything about that?” Feron shook his head and she guffawed. “Well it was insane. The first time I met the Illusive Man I was still sore from being dead…”

The evening sunset lingered as she spun her yarn, smiling, truly, for the first time since she’d opened the door and welcomed him inside.

* * *

  

**-000- The Present -000-**

Garrus met Jane’s mother the day he returned to Earth after the Crucible’s activation. Shepard was found in the wreckage of the Citadel by rescuers and evacuated to the Destiny Ascension and then to Earth. It took over a month for the entire Normandy Crew to return from their crash landing. Entire platoons of engineers were deployed to the mass relays to aid in their repair; the results surprised the galaxy--like the Crucible it was as if the technology was designed to aid in its own construction. Major relays got up and running first and refugees began to trickle back to their home planets and colonies.

The trip back to Earth was fuzzy in his memory; it felt like trying to remember a story someone else told him. The sensations were muffled: weeks spent trying to get EDI back online, silent dinners with the crew as each of them wondered how many of their loved ones were alive, slow and frustrated progress getting communications back up, and musings on whether he’d survived the last battle only to starve on an alien world. But the ship’s comm link was operational within the first few weeks and, after that, it was just a matter of waiting. Shepard’s talent for collecting a maximum of resources without breaking her budget kept the crew alive in those long weeks as rations were slowly consumed.

They knew, early on, that she wasn’t dead. As soon as communications went through they were demanding to know if she survived. A joyous affirmative sparked a day-long celebration as the realization seeped into their brains: she won. It wasn’t an easy victory; every day they got reports about her health from Miranda Lawson. Her reappearance surprised Garrus, but he couldn’t argue with the logic of it. Lawson, still an outlaw in some parts of the galaxy for her involvement, and abandonment, of Cerberus did not hesitate to openly volunteer heading the medical team trying to keep the commander alive. No one could claim she wasn’t qualified.

He blinked away the memories, nestling into the shuttle seat of the ship he’d caught a ride on to Earth. He called the elder Shepard a few hours before and asked her to set up a meeting time immediately. There was no response yet but he wasn't wasting time. As soon as he was in Vancouver he would look her up. He knew she was on the planet and she’d soon go on a tour of Alliance military bases off-world. That left him a few days to interview her. After that he had a long list of other Alliance and former Normandy crew members he needed to check up on and start piecing together whatever information they had of Jane.

On the way out of the Citadel he bought a new omni-tool and began to tweak it to his usual settings. His original was left at home; Garrus was too careful to take along a piece of equipment Liara might have the resources to hack, he had a suspicion she left behind little gifts on it every time they talked over the extranet. She was on guard now, and he expected her to throw the full brunt of her assets at his team. He’d also put in a request for a blackout fund to Vilus and received it within the hour. He put it all into a throwaway account accessible from his omni-tool and sent encrypted messages to Alenko and Novani letting them know he was leaving to take care of his part of the investigation. Each of them would carry out their work independently and meet up in a month or two.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep. Garrus dozed, a hundred stormy thoughts circling his brain.

* * *

 

**-000- About Ten Years Ago -000-**

When the Normandy touched down on the Earth again it was to fanfare. The ship was mobbed by celebrating humans and alien refugees of the Citadel. Shepard wasn’t there to greet them--but only because she was still being sewn back together in a hospital. After getting through the news reporters, happy people, and general uproar the crew began to separate. A small group went straight to Jane, while the rest went to their remaining families or straight back into Alliance command. There was a nagging whine somewhere in the back of his head that told Garrus he was supposed to be back on Palaven, checking on his father and sister. But he wouldn’t leave until he saw Shepard alive for himself.

When his party arrived they found Wrex and Grunt already there, lounging in the waiting room while doctors and nurses skirted around them. “Took you long enough, turian.” Wrex rumbled in greeting as he pushed off the wall he was leaning against. He gripped Garrus’ hand and slapped Tali on the shoulder. “Been here too long myself, me and the whelp have been keeping our people in line till Tuchunka gets around to sending us a ship home. Damn scientists should’ve been done fixing the relays by now.”

“Well I suppose it should only take a few weeks to get incredibly ancient, advanced technology working again, sure,” Garrus laughed.

“It’s not like they’ve got Reapers trying to murder us all anymore. They should be grateful.” Grunt moved forward and nodded to Garrus, “You should see the crap they’ve been feeding us. I got served a bowl of worms yesterday.”

“How is she?” Tali asked, her arm wrapped around Garrus’ elbow. “Miranda’s been giving us updates but she’s never let us talk to her.” There was a slight hitch in her voice and she stepped from foot to foot, head turning from side to side, looking for a person who wasn’t there.

“That woman wears secrets as easily as those jumpsuits of hers.” Dr. Chakwas stepped around Wrex’s bulk and went for the nurse sitting behind the lobby desk.

Joker followed her, nodding once to Wrex and Grunt. He was quieter lately; when someone tried to broach the subject of EDI he walked away. Alliance engineers were working on the Normandy in drydock, Specialist Traynor was in charge of a team trying to restore the AI system but the prognosis was still vague and worrying. Tali wanted to stay and help but would be leaving soon for Rannoch.

Garrus planned to stick around and be the turian liaison for his species on Earth while the Citadel was still being reconstructed and survivors relocated. He’d visit his family soon--but first he needed to see Shepard. Kaidan was there too, hanging back with a sour expression permanently impressed on his face. James was trying to pull a conversation out of him with no success, finally giving up and walking over to their circle.

“So when are we getting into the Commander’s room? She even awake yet?”

“That woman’s got us all by the quad,” Wrex thundered. “Might as well put a lock on Shepard’s door the way she acts. We get ‘visiting hours’ once every few days. Sometimes it’s once a week. Sometimes not even that! Damn if I ever thought I’d spend my time after the world ended mincing around a smirking pyjack like her.” He sighed, “Was hoping there’d be a bit more ryncol and maybe some heads to smash. Course Bakara’s got things all orderly on Tuchunka. Not even sure I’ll have an uprising to put down when I get back.” Wrex paused, “Where’s Liara?”

“She said she’ll be here later. Work.” Garrus shrugged.

“Hah! That girl gets squirrelier every time I see her. The hell does she get up to nowadays with the war over?”

“The ancestors only know.” Tali waved her hand, “Don’t ask us, she hardly left her room once she was back on the Normandy. Shepard had to drag her out every so often to socialize.”

“I noticed,” Wrex nodded. “Well, whatever it is better be important. That woman might have us all thrown out in an hour if she feels like it. Liara could miss her chance.”

“Not to worry,” Dr. Chakwas returned from the nurse’s desk. “It seems we were expected. Shepard is waiting for us in her room.”

They trailed down the hallway in a line, the stares that followed after them rested on his shoulders like whispering moths. People parted around them, and not because they had a krogan escort. His mandibles began to twitch, when did the lot of them get so recognizable? Miranda waved them down and he heard Joker give a low chuckle--the impeccable Agent Lawson was a mess.

Her hair was unkempt and her face drawn with stress and lack of sleep. She was in a wrinkled doctor’s uniform, hands clutching and un-clutching a datapad between her fingers. Miranda nodded, unsmiling, “She’s ready to see you. But only so long as I see it isn’t causing undue stress. I’d prefer if you refrained any comments on her arm. It was quite difficult to convince her to amputate and she has been bothering me constantly about it while we regrow a new one.”

Kaidan pushed forward, “She lost an arm?”

“And almost a leg, one of her eyes, a few fingers, and an alarming percentage of her epidermis. But she’s stable--for now.” Miranda tossed her head, a little of her old glamour creeping back. “And I will keep her that way. So you will be cooperative.” She leveled a glare at Grunt and Wrex and then spun around, the hospital door she guarded swished open.

A massive set of windows swallowed up one of the walls and sunlight brightened the room. A flinty woman with graying auburn hair looked up from the book she was reading out loud. In the bed next to her, mummified in bandages and plastic tubes, reclined Jane. A single, burning, green eye lifted to their faces and a strained smile shifted the gauze wrapping her face. “Damn, it’s about time.” Her voice was scratchy and low, hoarser than Garrus remembered.

“Junebug,” the woman turned her face to Jane, “you want to introduce me?” She had a soft voice but the tone was as gentle as steel scratching earth; her eyes, a misty hazel, were just as hard. Wrinkles were like lines carved in granite on her face and her wiry frame was molded by a firm hand and unforgiving circumstances. Garrus glimpsed a shadow of what Jane would look like in thirty years, although he hoped she’d smile more.

“Mom,” Jane turned her head slightly, he watched her expression wrinkle with pain. “This is my family.”

Hannah Shepard’s mouth twitched into a half-smile, “Which is the one who got his face blown off while you were being a terrorist?”

“Working for a terrorist, mom. And that’s Garrus.” Her eye shifted to him and crinkled with happiness. “I’ve come out of more firefights than I can count because of him.” Garrus swallowed hard, waving his hand at Hannah, whose gaze flicked away dismissively and rested on Tali.

“Is this the one that’s always got you crawling around geth-infested ships?”

A small coughing sound shook Jane’s tubes, it took him a moment to recognize it as laughter.“Yes, mom. This is Tali Vas Normandy. She’s been putting me to shame since Saren. I had to install rockets on my drone for it to keep up with hers.”

Hannah nodded, “Good. A friend should keep you sharp. Then who are these fine-looking, Alliance folk?”

“Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau, ma’am.” Joker saluted.

“At ease, lieutenant.” Hannah nodded, “I’ve heard good things about you.”

“Rear Admiral,” Dr. Chakwas smiled. “How is that new title treating you?”

Hannah stood and offered her hand to the doctor, “Still getting used to it. At least I earned it this time. Although, I get the feeling I won’t be the only one in the family. Rear Admiral's the highest rank a Shepard’s ever achieved--at least until Hackett gets his hands on my baby. She’ll be commanding a couple fleets, given time.”

“I’m in a great place to do that.” Jane rolled her eye.

“You’ve come back from worse.” Miranda tapped her datapad.

“And you’ll always be there to patch me up?” Her eyebrow, slightly singed, rose and she gave a small shake of her head. Garrus winced with her every movement, she radiated pain the way a star did light. His old scars ached at the sight of her and he felt Tali grip his arm tighter. Shepard was a woman too stubborn to die; he was grateful to see her again but, for the first time, saw the physical toll it took. He looked away and found Hannah Shepard’s cool gaze pinning him in place.

“Junebug, I’m going to go get something to eat. Let me order something for everyone else--I heard you only just came in, probably been surviving on military rations all the way here. They’ve got dextro food stalls set up around too. You--turian--you come with me and tell me what you and your girlfriend will want. We’ll carry it all back. Don’t say anything,” Hannah raised a finger at her daughter. “The food here is shit. I’m treating.” She stood and the crowd around Jane’s bed parted to let the admiral through. Garrus spluttered for a moment but Shepard nodded and Tali released his arm. “We’ll be back in two shakes,” Hannah told him as they walked out. “My daughter’ll be there when we get back, don’t glare at me like that, boy.” She kept a few paces ahead of him, leaving him to scuttle along behind.

“Ah--sorry ma’am. Didn’t mean to frown.”

Hannah didn’t turn to address him, “Yes, well, my girl says you’re her best friend.”

Garrus snorted, “Did she?”

“She did. She talks about you as much as she does--what’s his name?--Alenko. The Major. Which I’d worry about if I didn’t know you were attached to the quarian.” She stopped and swiveled around, her weathered hands crossing over her chest. “I suppose if she did bring a turian home I’d have to swallow it, but it’d take time.”

“It’s--it’s not like that between me and Shepard--your daughter I mean.”

“I would have thought so too, until she told me about the drell. Never pegged my girl as that sort.” Hannah started walking again, letting her disapproval trail after her like a wisp of foul smoke. “But hell, I’m old. I’ve got my prejudices, I know it. And my baby is smart. If she did bring home an alien he’d have to be a damn fine specimen.”

“Um, ma’am, was there something you wanted to ask me?” Garrus was now at a light jog, Hannah Shepard’s strides were long and unwavering.

“Sharp. But I could tell that from the stories she told.” Exiting the hospital, Hannah halted and Garrus bumped into her arm as he slowed. “Vakarian, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything I can do to help, admiral.”

Hannah’s face wrinkled with a smile that was half grimace. “That Alenko boy, he’s going to break my girl’s heart again. Jane knows it too. Maybe you already noticed?”

Garrus lowered his head and pulled his arms behind his back, “Well, I might have sensed some turbulence between them.”

“She’s told you all about it, I’m sure. Look, what I’m trying to ask is for you to help my Jane. She doesn’t like it when I get involved in her love life.” Hannah huffed, waving a hand in the air and shook her head, “We’ll talk about it but the second I make suggestions she gets stiff and pouty.” They both chuckled and Hannah shrugged, “I’m her mother.” She led him through the street, pointing out a small restaurant where a family of turian refugees were making a brisk trade providing Palaven-style cuisine on Earth. “Just be an ear for her, would you?” Hannah held the door for him and he could smell fried griss wafting from inside. The scent knotted his stomach with memory and hunger.

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

 

* * *

**  
-000- The Present  -000-**

She wasn’t as fast on her feet anymore, but took that with a pinch of pride; at forty-two years old Jane Shepard had begun to relish her battlescars. She tightened her leg brace, it clicked into place and she winced. The option to completely replace the joints and muscles around her bad knee was something she contemplated at times, but avoided. Her skin was woven through with synthetic fibers, as were her bones and muscles. Her spine, legs, arms, skull, and ribs were each at least partly fused with artificial bone mass where they’d been shattered or destroyed the first time she died. Her original left arm had been disposed of in some Earth hospital after it was removed, replaced with lab-grown muscle and an artificial skeleton; huge swathes of her skin were grafted from cloned tissue. And she wasn’t entirely convinced her organs weren’t modified in some way too. Along with standard military implants she received from the Alliance, Jane was not a little close to classification as a cyborg. It was a common danger for the modern soldier.

She couldn’t say she was ungrateful though, they held her broken ass together for longer than she cared to remember. Jane hauled herself out of the chair and moved forward to inspect her wall-mounted armory.  Reaching up, her hands stroked the barrel of a shotgun. It was an M-300 Claymore and one of her favorites; fifteen years ago the kickback would have broken her arms without the Project Lazarus implants. This one was a gift from Grunt, tribute for his battlemaster. He gave it to her a week or two before the Alliance arrested her and she was forced to leave it on the Normandy until her reinstatement. She had fond memories of turning cannibals into fine, red mists during the war.

Engineers weren’t expected to train with heavier firearms like shotguns, they were usually preoccupied with maintaining or fortifying shields, weakening their opponents’ tech, or deploying battle drones. But after seeing Tali shred their enemies the first time Jane put her on a squad mission she began to visit the Spectre firing range when she had down time at the Citadel. She didn’t use shotguns as often as her pistols or SMG’s, but she loved what they did for her in the more intimate moments of battle when an opponent was within face-punching distance. Today felt like a good day for her Claymore; she was going off-planet to see about collecting a bounty on some smugglers. The asari government was offering about five thousand credits a head on some Eclipse mercenaries who bucked the usual subtlety of their criminal operations in favor of open warfare with the policing authorities on the colony.

She didn’t need to bring anyone in alive, but Jane was interested to see if she was good enough to capture them. The Claymore would have their shields down in one shot, after that it was just a matter of incapacitating the targets. It would be tricky if she stumbled on them as a large group, but a thorough scouting would help with that. Jane took down her Scorpion and M-9 Tempest, two other favorites. She loaded up on grenades and checked over her battle drone and turrets a few times. By noon she was boarding a shuttle off Intai’sei and before the next morning she was in asari space.

As Ashley Cooke she obtained a bounty hunting license several years back to keep herself from collecting too much flab. It was easy to visit shooting galleries or run obstacle courses but a soldier’s battle reflexes were best honed under fire. Liara hated that Jane accepted bounties, it was just too big a security risk. Her retort was blunt: she wasn’t ready to hang her guns up yet. She adjusted a strap on her shoulder; the colony she landed on wasn’t large, located on the fringes of asari space and riddled with crime the way a bad apple was with worms. Jane inhaled the air, which had the same scent of pollution, sweat, and malice Omega did; it made her sneeze and she swiped at her nose.

Since settling onto Intai’sei she’d gone on about one bounty hunt a month. She’d gotten used to not being recognized. Jane moved away from the shuttle station and slipped into the crowd. A single armored woman among dozens of mercs and pirates, she navigated the crush of people surrounding her like a native. The bustle made the tips of her mouth turn up; the sound of life wrapped around her like a warm blanket: arguments, laughter, shouts, song. This was when she missed the Citadel, the claustrophobia of the Wards and the vast terraces and plazas on the Presidium. They had a special hum to them, filled to bursting with people and their voices.

For a moment she let her imagination paint a picture of homecoming: flying back to the Citadel, meeting up with her friends again. She’d find Garrus first and watch cars with him and a bottle of hooch on a rooftop. She’d sign up for a tourney and get Jack and Grunt to fly out and dominate the competition. She’d eat at her favorite restaurant and then go stumbling from bar to bar with Wrex and Tali. She’d visit Jacob’s family, convince Miranda to take her shopping, see if Kaidan was doing all right.

The daydream faded as the crowd thinned; Jane shook the fantasy from her head. She couldn’t go back yet. Her eyes refocused as she took in her surroundings. Police reports from the bounty mapped out a crude description of Eclipse mercs’ territory. The grunts would be out patrolling, the bigger bounties she was interested in were safely tucked away in their hidey hole. Alliance Admiral and Spectre Jane Shepard would gun down a patrol and cajole or threaten the locations she needed out of the ones she left conscious. Ashley Cooke, former lieutenant and current engineer, didn’t have the kind of clout to get away with Jane’s blitzkrieg style.

She stepped into a bar that looked appropriately dingy to strategize and soak up some of the local atmosphere. Covering her mouth, she coughed to hide her smile--a trio of Eclipse mercs sat at the counter heckling the bartender. It was an asari, salarian, and human; they wore their youth on their faces and in the swagger of their gestures. The asari was slamming her glass on the countertop over and over while the batarian bartender moved to fill their order with the enthusiasm of a slug. Jane sat a few stools away, leaning on the counter with her elbows, cataloguing different escape routes out of the bar. A splintering crack smashed the wall above the batarian’s head and he flinched away from the ricocheting glass; the human merc laughed, wiggling her fingers at him and asked for another shot glass.

Jane waved at the bartender and considered her options; there were two other patrons in the bar and neither was armoured. They’d run if a firefight broke out, but still risked getting shot. She squinted at the batarian, who sighed again after refilling the asari’s drink, then left an entire bottle of vodka for the human after replacing her shot glass. He trumped over to her, muttering under his breath. She smiled at him and took a chance.

“Hi, I’ll take some whiskey, if you’ve got it.”

“Sure thing, human.” The batarian turned and pulled a bottle from the shelf behind him. He picked up a glass, polished it with his rag, and set it on the counter. The asari merc pounded the bar, her arms gesticulating a wild story to her friends, shaking the counter with her fist. The batarian sighed a third time, all four eyes narrowing at the three Eclipse grunts.

She placed a credit chit in front of her, “Thanks.” Jane nodded at the trio, “This happen a lot?”

The bartender glanced at the mercs, then leaned across the bar, “Ever since Kalabassa put herself in charge it’s been like this every damned day. Police’d be useful if they’d stop getting killed.” His voice, like a handful of rocks tossed around in a tin can, lowered to a whisper, “Pretty soon my damn sales taxes’ll be going to Eclipse. Government could give a varren’s fart about us.”

Jane sipped her drink, her face wrinkling at the taste. “Sounds like a pain in the ass.” She rested her chin on one hand, leaning far enough for him to get a good look at some of the weapons strapped to her armor. “Look, I’m a professional. You don’t know me, but I’m here about some bounties and I’d like to beat the ever loving shit out of those three for information--but I want to avoid damaging your bar and customers. You got a back alley behind here I could use?”

The batarian looked her up and down, glancing at the pistol and SMG holstered on her hips and the belt of grenades around her waist. He stared at her face, tracing the lightened scars around her cheeks and jaw and the coolness in her eyes. He nodded, “Fine but I want you to call them out good and loud. Don’t wanna be associated with dead Eclipse. Finish the drink, get up, insult their pride at the door and they’ll coming running after you. Go around back, pretty clear since they picked up the trash yesterday. Watch out for the asari and human, both of them are biotics. Salarian thinks he’s the boss. Say something about his poor breeding.”

“Thanks.” Jane took her credit chit back, smiling. She knocked back the rest of the whiskey, the caustic burn of cheap liquor made her shiver. Standing, she turned away from the bartender and walked back to the door, glancing back at the three mercs. She leaned on the frame of the entrance, crossing her arms. “Hey assholes--you fucks in the piss-colored armor.” The surprise that arced across their faces turned to confusion as they turned. “I need to ask you a question.” She stepped backwards out the door, her shield powering up as she waited.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any typos or grammatical errors, I'm still editing this myself and I miss things. Thank you for reading and thank you especially to anyone leaving comments or kudos--they are appreciated.

**-000- About Ten Years Ago -000-**

Thane pushed himself out of bed, rising with slow, thin breaths. He stood and went to the window, pulling back the blinds. Jane, cocooned in the sheets, hid her head under a pillow. He moved back and put a hand on the blanketed lump of tired flesh. “Siha, I am leaving for my morning exercises.”

Jane lifted the pillow off her face, “What?” Her words were half-formed and slurred with sleep. In the pale, artificial light of a Citadel morning she was wan and crumpled. Her hair was a rat’s nest of tangles and her makeup was smeared; in her armor or Alliance uniform Thane forgot she was a decade younger than him. He crouched by her, touching her cheek and brushing the bangs from her forehead.

“I will be back in several hours. Sleep, Jane.” He wanted to lift her in his arms and carry her to the bath, wash her face and the sweat from her aching muscles. He wanted to kiss her and let the taste of her mouth linger in his.

“Mm, no. I’ll go with--” Jane shifted in bed, one arm throwing off the sheets while her legs swung off the mattress. “Shit. What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep,” Thane rested his hand on her thigh. “You are not scheduled to leave for another day and a half. Your next meeting is not for another seven hours. I will return before then and we shall share a meal, if you wish. I hoped to invite Kolyat.”

“That sounds nice, but I still want to go with you.” The exhaustion was fading from her voice, but he could hear it hiding around the edges of her words.

“Then I will do them in my apartment and you will rest.” He rose and pulled the blankets back around her bare shoulders.

“You don’t need to do that.” Jane rubbed her eyes, leaving black bruises where her eyeliner smudged.

“I would like to spend my last months pleasing the people I love.” This made her grimace and she followed him into his living room, the bed’s comforter dragging on the floor. She slumped on his couch as he began to move through his routine. He was precise, force of will keeping his hands from trembling. When he finished he found her dozing, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb. Jane jerked awake but smiled when she saw him standing over her.

“I need to shower.”

“Go, I will wait.” He saw her eyes glinting at him and her lips part in invitation. But she shut them and stood, kissed him on the jaw, and swept around into the bathroom. A moment of guilty longing strangled him while Thane watched her leave. She’d left the blanket on the couch and was naked except for a pair of underwear. There was never expectation when she spent the night, but he wished for his strength to return--just for an hour or two.

When she was done they called Kolyat and his son spent several hours with them over a traditional meal while they caught up on each other’s lives. Shortly after, Jane left for her meeting but returned at night, still pressed and prim in her officer’s uniform. They ordered in and ate together on the couch, her head nuzzled on his shoulder as the news played. This, he imagined, was a proper marriage. One without the lengthy and undiscussed absences present in his last. Now it was Jane who left him, but Thane knew what her work was and felt only pride.The fantasy comforted him, it was only when his vision dimmed and he had attacks of vertigo that reminded him he was a dead man.

“Hey,” Jane was fidgeting with the sleeve of his shirt. “I may be gone for a few weeks. There’s some trouble going on Omega--well,” she laughed, “more trouble than usual. Aria T’Loak asked me to come herself. I don’t know how long it will take but I know it’s hell if she needs me as back up. I’ll be home when it’s over.”

He turned to her, breathing the clean scent of her hair. “Siha, go cautiously. That woman burns with an unscrupulous fire. You know she will serve her own needs first.”

“Yeah,” Jane’s eyes narrowed and her lips puckered with sour distaste. “I know Aria. More than I should, given how little time we’ve spent together. She’ll try to keep me alive, I think. She realizes that everything going on right now is bigger than Omega, even if she admitted it through the fakest smile I’ve ever seen.”

“I do not doubt your success, I only doubt your companions.” He reached over and curled his fingers around one of her hands. Several thoughts crossed his mind at once and he slowed his breath, a prickle starting at the back of his head. Thane’s vision swam but returned after a few seconds and he sighed. “Siha, I would like to discuss something else with you, before you leave.”

“What’s wrong?” Jane sat up, her grip tightening around his palm.

He squeezed her hand and pulled away, turning to face her. Her eyes were running up and down his face, her own screwed up and pensive. “I went on an errand during your meeting.”

“All right,” Jane’s mouth turned down and her arms crossed.

“It was to see my lawyer.” Understanding lit in her eyes and her shoulders tensed. “I arranged my will many years ago, when Kolyat was still a child--before my wife died, in fact. But I have recently decided to make changes to it.”

A warm flush worked its way up from her neck to cheeks. “You don’t need to do that. I--” A small smile came to life on Jane’s face, “I don’t want to displace Kolyat, he’s your son. I know I’m important to you in my own way.” Her smile shrank, “I’m happy with what we’ve got now.” She reached up and cupped his jaw, “This is everything I want.”

Thane turned his face into her hand, it was smooth and warm, slightly damp from sweat. “I have collected more wealth than you might guess working as an assassin. The hanar are generous to my people. My health problems have been expensive, and it is fortunate I can afford them. When I leave you I do want Kolyat to have all that is left, but there are a few possessions of mine not meant for him.

“I don’t mean specifically my old equipment, although you are welcome to it. I have written out instructions to my son to deliver an item to you. It is not much, but it is what I wish you to have. To remember of me, when I have returned to the ocean.”

There was a tightness to Jane’s face that hurt to see. She had his hands in hers and was rubbing circles on them with her thumb. It took another minute before she looked up to meet his eyes. “Okay, thanks for telling me. I’m not really looking forward to getting it, but thanks. I--” Her lips pursed and she looked away, frowning. “I’ve been making arrangements too.”

Thane lowered his head, his chin touching his chest. “No, siha. You must see this through till the end, for all our sakes.”

Her head cocked and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes stretched over her expression. “I’ve survived a lot, but I can’t keep believing my luck will hold. We’re both living on borrowed time, and I’m not sure which of us will go first.”

“You must not think this way. Do you know what I pray for each day?” Jane shook her head. “I pray to Arashu to keep Kolyat honest and happy, for your protection and health. I pray to Amonkira, that your prey may soon lie dead at your feet. I pray for life, your life and my son’s. Do not look for death, siha. You already tread among the graves, you are following the path to destruction. But do not let that be your own. I did not think I could find this,” he swept his hand at her. “This peace, this love. You are not dying--why act as if you are?”

“Because I don’t want it, whatever is coming after all of this--if we win.” Jane’s teeth were bared, her jaw tensed and her hands balled. “I want to kill the Reapers and then I want to sleep. I want to sleep and never wake up.”

“No.” Thane lowered his head, he shivered, gulping the air. He raised a hand to his chest, it shuddered and Jane put her arms around him. “If I were not ill, you know where I would be. And I will be there, I am with you always.” She kissed his cheek, his chest’s convulsions slowed. “When we met I was ready to die. That was a half-life of shadows and you do not walk in the dark.”

“Thane--”

“Siha, you are a burning light. You blind me each time we are together and it is painful to think you’d extinguish such goodness.” His eyes, black and bright, bore a hole in her face. “I cannot ask much of you, because you have already given me all I wanted. But I will ask this: lean on me. Lean on me while you can and when I am taken, fall back on the people who love you. The crew of the Normandy are not just your subordinates, they are your friends. Depend on them, and they will lift you up. Let them do this, because they need you. As I do.”

Jane wrapped her arms tight around him, “Goddammit.”

“Promise me.”

Her breath streamed out of her mouth in a long huff of air. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Finish the hunt, and then take care of the people.”

“I can’t say I’ll live that long,” she brushed hair from her face and squeezed Thane’s shoulders. “I’ll try.”

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

It was a trap--Moraina new it was a trap. What she couldn’t decide was whether or not it was worth tripping. It took her two weeks to track down the safehouse where the Shadow Broker’s data from Trebin International was forwarded. That was disconcerting, her bugs were good; two weeks was nearly half and again what she spent on a hunt. She pressed herself into a small corner of a building adjacent to her target. The trail led her out to a small colony; there was barely three million people on the entire planet, It was a minor outpost of the Hierarchy.

The images and recordings were being transferred to a small office. Officially it belonged to a tiny software firm that specialized in VI’s built for businesses. After putting out a few feelers she knew it was the right place--the electric bills were colossal. They were running enough power through their office to keep ten operations going. A quick recon mission also revealed overly-sophisticated locks and advanced security systems built in to dummy equipment worked over to look cheap.

But this was too simple. Not finding it, that took more effort than she expected. It was the desolated aura the building emanated like a bad stench that set the tips of her fringe tingling. The business front and its security were an expensive investment, but Moraina hadn’t seen a single person move in or out of the building since she arrived.

She scratched her neck, her leg muscles were stiff from standing in the same position and her shoulders were tense. The conversation she had with her partners two weeks ago was terse. Vakarian put them in a conference call just before leaving for Earth. They affirmed their plans, shared some news, and hung up, wishing each other luck. She didn’t expect to see them soon, she had at least another few weeks of work ahead of her. Unfortunately, if there was anything in the building worth taking she needed to consolidate it with the information they did have in order to start moving in on new leads.

Moraina arched her back and rolled her neck, squinting at the same set of doors her eyes had been glued to for over three hours. She needed to leave or make a move; her infiltration cloak flickered on and she melted away. She avoided the glare of street lamps and flitted to a wall of the building that had several windows looking out of the second floor. Slipping a finger across her omni-tool, an adhesive application activated on the palms of her gloves and boots. There were sensors embedded in the wall that her omni-tool deactivated as she approached.

Moraina appraised the building from her vantage point; it was four floors up. At the very least the upper ones were where the fake VI business went on--she suspected that the databases storing the Shadow Broker’s feeds were in a basement area. Her censor wasn’t picking up any life from inside but there had to be a blocking signal keeping her blind. That was fine, the heavy security wouldn’t be in the offices, and that was where she’d get in.

It was a short climb and she was cutting a hole in the glass after only a few moments. More motion sensors were hidden under a drab, carpet floor that beeped off while she clambered in. Dropping inside, she glanced around. It was still early in the morning, a few hours past dawn on a planet where nighttime could last over thirty hours. Other businesses in the area were stirring with bleary-eyed employees.

The hall of cubicles she’d entered was dark and silent. Her omni-tool still wasn’t picking up signs of life, and she sidled along the walls under her infiltration cloak with her teeth grinding. She found the basement without much trouble, and was sliding her hands along the room for evidence of a hidden entrance. The basement looked like a boiler room--it probably was, but the heat and dank were good for throwing off scans. A small switch secreted behind a loose control panel opened up a narrow hole in the floor. Lights flickered on and illuminated a small, metal ladder. She waited a few moments for exclamations of surprise or alarm but nothing sounded up from the hole’s depths.

There was a growing trend among Moraina’s marks to scale back technology. The smart choice nowadays was going for a simple trapdoor mechanism to hide their secret stockpiles. It was easier to conceal something that operated on a spring than one that was automated and needed power. But that sort of skullduggery only fooled two-bit detectives; Moraina descended the steps with a twin sense of unease and excitement rolling in her stomach. She moved with as much silence as she could, her feet gently sliding along the metal rungs as she climbed down and down. She tasted blood in her mouth where her teeth bit into the inside of her cheek; this was a terrible position to defend if there were Broker agents below, waiting for her to appear.

But there was no calamitous greeting waiting for her at the bottom, and her excitement shifted to dread as she began to suspect what was waiting for her. She ended her climb in a cramped hallway that an underfed salarian would feel comfortable in if he was crouching. Her hips hips almost brushed the sides of the wall and Moraina turned sideways to walk down it, her hand resting on her pistol. It was a short walk, she came to a metal door and pulled out her gun, leveling the barrel ahead of her as she opened it with a breath caught in her throat.

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

The spectre team was barely off the station when things began to fall apart. Several of their interview-ees called back after confirming a meeting with sudden cancellations. More than a few of them were old friends. Kaidan had to tell Garrus to dig his heels in and keep badgering them. The most recent was Tali; Garrus was still flying to Rannoch, determined to wring something out of his old squadmate--even if it was only what Liara said to deter her. That was after he finished up on Earth, then he was off to Omega, to see if Aria T’Loak knew anything.

Kaidan's part of the investigation, looking in to the imposter C-Sec officers, was not bearing much fruit.The two were not showing up in any database he had access to. That was as suspicious and worrying as their connection to Shepard’s whereabouts. Kaidan’s other lead, Barla Von’s information, was still forthcoming until he had a written agreement signed off by the Council awarding the volus his new position. He was on edge about that though, and brought it up to Novani and Garrus before they separated. Liara’s discovery of their activities happened only a brief period after the volus’ interrogation. It was unsubtle in a way that didn’t suit Liara, but with Shepard her protective instincts revved and Kaidan wondered if she’d made any other mistakes while trying to keep Jane safe and hidden.

He’d still keep Barla Von as an informant, the next time they met Kaidan planned to feed bad hints to the little turncoat. It’d work only the once but was worth whatever jab he could make at the overwhelming force of resources and manpower Liara possessed. He pinched the bridge of his nose; he was still on the Citadel, poring over a long list of mug shots. He had the facial recognition software to pull up faces with a close similarity to the turian/human duo a few days ago; within the hour it came back with millions of results. Narrowing it from there was a little more complicated, but he was working with some of the security personnel who ran the camera feeds around the Citadel.

Soon he’d start pulling feeds from anything he had the authority to confiscate. A broad search had failed and he had to fall back on simple, procedural measures. He slumped back into his chair for a moment, straightening almost immediately as his father’s stern voice ghosted in his head with a snip about posture. Spending three days locked up at C-Sec HQ in front of a monitor made him feel a bit like he was some grunt intern on the force. Kaidan chuckled and ran a hand over his face, ah the glamour of being a spectre.

While he breathed into his palm a memory slipped free of its moors and came drifting into his head. It was Jane hunched over a desk in her captain’s quarters, a mess of datapads and notes littering all the tabletop space. In-between missions during that final year she hardly left her room except to do rounds on the ship and see to the crew. She was good about being social, but few things kept the crushing stress of her job away. That had fallen on him and, if he was honest, Garrus. There was a connection between the two of them that used to make him uncomfortable when he was still quietly flirting with Jane on the SR-1. Later on, after he rejoined the crew, the feeling dissipated. He couldn’t feel awkward around a man who’d kept Jane alive while she was chasing monsters for one of the most dangerous men in the galaxy.

The sudden turn of memory into his old relationship drew a sigh from him. Kaidan checked his omni-tool, finding a deluge of messages from his ex. The divorce was going through, at least. In another few months he’d be back to an empty apartment. It was relief and dread of this that dogged his thoughts every day. Having work crowd all his spare time was a refuge. A new messaged pinged from his wrist and he opened it up after checking it wasn’t another rant about his failed marriage. It was a note from one of the C-Sec detectives; he sat at attention as his eyes scanned the text.

There was a match for one of the criminals’ ID’s, or at least as close a match as they could get. He stared at the picture attached; it was a close resemblance. It was a shoulders-up portrait of a female turian. She had a remarkable likeness to the one in Wassa Vari’s video, although the colony markings were different, her eyes browner, and the tips of her mandibles rounder. He wondered how common it was for a turian to have a plastic surgery procedure. The ID came from an old report, a case on domestic violence. Kaidan scratched his chin, he had no idea what connotations and contexts turians had for spousal abuse. There had been a few half-serious discussions about the mechanics of turian relationships over drinks with Garrus and a couple of his other turian friends. None of them went down this avenue of topic.

The woman in the headshot wasn’t the victim or the abuser, according to the report. She’d gotten between the couple and took a biotic-powered punch to the face for her trouble. She was the one who’d called and filed a charge in the first place. Kaidan could see the discoloration around her eyes where a bruise had formed, small cracks in the plating on the right side of her face where tiny lines of blue seeped through. This was at least two decades old, and it wasn’t exactly what he hoped for. But he put down her name--one Rixis Tulvaro--and put a new search into the databases.

After a moment he got his results and they were as conclusive as he expected them to be. Rixis Tulvaro was dead, at least on record. The Citadel’s database listed her as deceased almost eight years before the invasion of the Reapers. Her family put in the paperwork for it; when he did a search of her surname Kaidan couldn’t find a single one of the Tulvaros still alive. The father passed on before Rixis and the mother and siblings perished in the invasion. He rubbed his face, her entire family was decimated. No help there unless he could track down some of her friends.

He sat up in his chair and steepled his fingers, pressing his elbows into the surface of the desk he’d slept on the night before. He needed to decide now if this was a clue he wanted to pursue, if it was a clue. Considering his other options, Kaidan made the glum assessment that he didn’t have alternative routes to pursue until Garrus and Novani came back with news of their own findings. With their tacit agreement to keep silent until their meeting, over a month away, he was groping blind in the widening shadows Jane Shepard’s disappearance cast.

Kaidan closed his eyes and let his breath fall into meditative intervals. He pressed his forehead against his knuckles and let the still air of the room consume him. After ten minutes passed he opened his eyes and pushed away from the desk, cracking his neck as he stood and turned to the door. A lead was a lead until he knew definitively that it wasn’t. He’d leave, shower, and sleep a little--letting the C-Sec guys do their thing. Then he was going to find an empty barstool and a glass of beer; tomorrow Liara T’Soni was going to regret letting her poker face slip.

* * *

**-000- The Present -000-**

“Why are you here early?” Jane’s crows feet crinkled at the edges of her eyes. They were deep wrinkles, the kind her face made when she was confused or concerned. When she laughed they bounced with her throaty chuckles and made her look younger, in a way Ferron couldn’t explain.

“You keep track of my visits? Not getting desperate, are you Shepard?” He smiled at her, Jane was easily disarmed with humor. He’d come to Liara’s birthday years ago and watched the lauded admiral snort wine out of her nose when her turian friend made a joke about calibrations. A bearded man in a hat kept her in stitches the rest of the night until she stumbled out of the party. Ferron crossed his arms, “I have to warn you, I’m married to my job.”

A smile flickered on her face but she shook her head at him. “Seriously, why? You come every other month. Your last trip here was three weeks ago. There something going on with Liara?”

Ferron lowered his eyes and shrugged, “Honestly Shepard? I don’t know. She called me and told me to fly out to your little dust planet and see what you’ve been up to.”

“Just out of the blue.”

“Yes. Don’t ask me what it means,” he shrugged at her.

“It means something’s up and she doesn’t want me to know about it.” Jane rubbed one of her arms, there was a small, pink scar where she’d gotten shot taking down those Eclipse mercs a few weeks back. It went right through her forearm, clean and easy. The thing itched and she tickled the skin around it with one of her fingers as she thought. “Ferron?”

The breach of silence made him jump, “What?”

“Do you think Liara would try to stop me if I left Intai’sei?”

Ferron felt the back of his neck prickle, “Are you going to?”

“I’ve been off-planet plenty of times,” Jane raised her eyebrows. “Do you think she’d try to stop me if I left for good?”

He swallowed, “Is that what you want?”

Jane slid her gaze above his head, looking out the wall of glass in her apartment. “I don’t know. But I’ve got this crawling feeling in my gut that something’s going on that I should know about.” Her eyes locked onto his face, “Is there something I should know about? Hows progress been on the--”

Ferron put his hands up, “She won’t tell me anything. All I’ve been told is that the danger is there.”

Her scarred, calloused fist left spiderweb cracks in the wall, Jane’s mouth snarled. “Fucking shit, I am tired of hearing that. I’ve been here for over five years, Ferron. I was happy for the first three and now I’m getting sick of waiting.” Her back turned and he watched a waterfall of red hair swing around her waist, “If Liara doesn’t make any headway on this soon, I’m going. I don’t give a shit about the danger. I need people to help me solve this. I need my team.”

“Give it just a little more time,” Ferron crossed his arms, leaning on her couch. “A year at the most. I’ll tell Liara how you feel, you know she’s doing her best.”

“I know. But I’m tired of being away from my family.” She turned back to him and walked over, staring down at his slouched form. “You’re my friend, Ferron, and so is Liara. But I know you’ve got a more complicated working relationship with her. I know you’re about to go and tell her everything we just talked about and anything else you’ve been snooping around for since you showed up. That’s fine.” Jane sighed, “Just don’t get in my way if I do decide to leave. I’m asking you that, as my friend.”

Ferron’s eyes went to the floor but, after a long moment, moved back up to meet hers. “Look, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks,” Jane nodded. When he left hours later she spent the night taking down and cleaning her guns. There was a rage boiling inside her that did not show in the way she moved. Her hands were steady and even, her lips did not tremble and her face remained the same milky pallor that sunburned too easily. She took a long shower and went to bed early. She did not sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading; thank you especially to those who leave comments or kudos--they are appreciated. I apologize for any typos, I do my best to catch them all but sometimes miss a few.

**-000- The Present -000-**

Hannah Shepard contacted him as he was landing in Vancouver, agreeing to see him almost immediately. A car was sent to pick him up and an unsmiling corporal escorted him to an office that could have taken up a third of his apartment.

The first utterance from Hannah’s mouth when Garrus entered her office was a soft laugh. “So it’s the real thing this time, is it?” She sat enthroned behind her desk, a mahogany monstrosity guarded with a perimeter of framed pictures. He shifted in his seat and eyed the back of each picture, wondering what sort of child Jane used to be.

“Admiral,” he began, “I’m grateful you had time to see me.” Hannah had not aged much since Garrus last saw her in person, a good seven years ago. There was a little more gray around her temples, a few of her wrinkles were deeper, and her mouth had curdled with sourness. Her daughter’s departure from the Alliance was a disappointment Hannah did not try to conceal, although Garrus suspected she supported Jane’s decision anyway. An errant thought wondered if she'd get along with his father.

Hannah crossed her arms, “This is the first time you’ve come to see me in person about Janey. I was curious why.”

“Well, ma’am, I’ve been given a special assignment by the Council. It’s classified, of course, but I think I can trust you with some of the information.”

“They want to find her _now?”_ Hannah shrugged, “Having my girl around would have been more useful last year when that batarian debacle went down.”

Garrus’ brow plates raised, “They could have. She’s got a knack for compromise.”

“She’d have shone in the war, my war I mean. We had a desperate need for peacemakers back then.” Hannah’s severity eased a little as her thoughts rested on Jane’s accomplishments, a smile across her lips. When her eyes flickered up to him the softness vanished. “I’ve already had this conversation with you before. Just because the Council is backing you up doesn’t mean I’m budging.” The first time Garrus contacted Hannah Shepard for information about her daughter the conversation was brief and monosyllabic: No.

“I realize that ma’am. But this time I’m hoping to convince you otherwise.” Garrus stood up from his chair and walked around her desk, pulling something from behind his back. “I wanted to show you this.” He watched her face light up as she took the small drive from his fingers.

“What’s this?” She ran her thumb over a tiny inscription carved into its side. It was in the common tongue of Palaven.

“That’s something from my time on the Normandy. You can have it, I already made copies.” He sat back down as she loaded it into her computer and the video played across its screen.

* * *

 

**-000- About Twelve Years Ago -000-**

“Well, Shepard, you’ve just come back from a suicide mission,” Garrus’ voice laughed from behind the camera. “What’s next for the rogue, Alliance Commander?”

“We’re doing interviews now?” Jane looked up from her desk, a thousand plastic splinters were carefully spaced across it. She had a pair of tweezers in her hand and a bottle of glue sat next to the other. “Where did you get that thing?”

“Tali jury rigged it from some spare parts she had.” The back of his head moved into the forefront of the hovering camera as he walked over and pulled a chair next to hers. “EDI thought it might be a nice parting gift to the crew if we put together a video presentation to remember everything we’ve done. Just the core squad, our friends. If you can count an unshackled AI as a friend.”

Jane set down her tweezers and swivelled her chair to face him, “I guess we might be some of the few people who can. What did she have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Say a few words, hopes for the future, that sort of nostalgic, sophomoric crap we all did in our twenties right before we went off to get real jobs. Something to help remind ourselves that we did good when we’re back to scraping together whatever resources we can get before the world ends.”

She raised her eyes and let them spin around her quarters, “The Illusive Man did build a hell of a ship. And the five-star treatment was nice, while it lasted.” Jane turned her gaze back to him, “So have you done your bit yet?”

“Yeah, Tali filmed it. I’m supposed to do you and then you pick who to ask next. I’m hoping you’ll do Kasumi, because you’re the only one on the ship who knows where she is at any given moment.”

“She’s usually in her room,” Jane snorted.

Garrus tapped his talons on his knee, “I don’t really go looking for her that often.”

“It’s kind of her whole schtick, Garrus,” she laughed and glanced back at the camera. “So what are you asking again?”

“I’m not sure. What do you want to say?” He looked over his shoulder, cocking his head at the bot.

“I--” The screen zoomed to her face, the pale circle of her flesh looming in its lens. For three breaths she said nothing, finally standing up from her desk and walking over to her bed. The drone followed, zooming out, while she opened a drawer in her bedside table. Garrus wandered into the frame and crouched down next to her.

“When did you have the time to accumulate enough crap to fill a drawer? Everything cluttering up my living space is scopes, wires, and wrappers.”

“We both got back to the Normandy in a bit of a crush, didn’t we? Most of my shit was all blown to hell with the SR-1. And we never did go back to your base on Omega after we took out all those Blue Sun bastards.” Her hands stopped scrabbling and emerged with a small, glass object.

They both stretched up and Garrus tilted his head down to look at what she held. “No, but I wasn’t keen on running back into enemy territory. Omega can keep its own. I know that now.” The twin tone of his voice warbled low and Jane’s face lifted and met his eyes.

She clasped his shoulder, “I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who could take getting shot by an airship as lightly as you. And that’s not even the deepest shit we’ve cozied up to, Archangel. _Omega_ knows that now.” They both laughed and she held the glass up higher, “Here, this is a snow globe.”

“Oh, they sell these at the gift shop on the Presidium. The Earth-themed one.” He turned it around in his hand, watching small eddies of glitter swirl in the water. “Is this somewhere back on your home planet?”

“Yeah. It’s in a national park called Yosemite. This is Mariposa, a grove of trees there. They’re ancient, thousands of years old.” Jane peered through his fingers at her snowglobe, a soft red glowing in her cheeks. “It was the first time I’d ever been to Earth. I was nine or ten, mom was in-between tours. She’s American but I was born off-world on the SSV Lovelace.” She glanced up, “You know anything about Earth nations?”

“Not so much.”

“America’s one of its countries. My mom was born on the west coast, where this forest is. She took me there because she wanted the first place I ever saw on our homeworld to be something humans had nothing to do with creating.” The glitter was dancing around the green-tinted branches of a tiny forest. The trunks were painted a deep red and blocky, black writing wrapped around the base of the snow globe, which was a shiny, white plastic. In the middle, one of the trees stood slightly forward and center. There was a hole going through its trunk that a miniscule line of terrestrial cars were passing through.

“Mom bought this for me when we were there. It was kind of a rough time for us. Her dad had just passed on and the guy who fathered me was sniffing around about joint-custody or something. We never talk about him. Anyway, it wasn’t a good year for our family.” She waved a hand at the ghosts weaving around her head, shrugging the memories off. “I was asking a lot of questions then too. Who was that man? Why did she have to work so much? Why couldn’t I go stay with Auntie Emma? Just--just stuff kids don’t mean to be awful about but are, you know?”

Garrus lowered his head and nodded, “I fought with my dad over petty crap all the time.”

“I didn’t know it hurt her,” Jane’s eyes fastened on the snow globe and she plucked it from his palm, ran the tips of her fingers around its base. She gripped its edges and shook it once, looking at him through the haze of water and glass. “While she was off-duty she decided it was time for me to see where the Shepard clan came from. But she didn’t take me to the family first, she took me here,” Jane offered the snow globe back to him. “To Mariposa.”

“How did you not lose this in the attack?” Garrus squeezed the trinket in his hand, feeling the plastic give.

“It wasn’t on the ship to begin with. I had it in my apartment, back on Earth.”

“You’ve got an apartment there?”

“Yeah, close to Alliance HQ. It’s basically a closet with an attached bath and kitchenette. I don’t really live there.”

“I had something like that when I was serving the Hierarchy."

“Mom picked everything up after the SR-1 went down,” she swallowed, taking a deep breath. “After she heard I was back we started talking again. I arranged a meeting on the Citadel, and she gave this back to me.” Jane tapped on the glass dome and smiled, “I like to remember what she told me, when I was there in the trees.” The camera circled them lazily, “She said every person she loved was from this little globe of water and dirt floating in space. She said if I took a moment to look, listen, and breathe, I’d know why she joined the Alliance.” Her luminous eyes closed, “And I did.”

There was a moment of pregnant silence and the camera pulled away in a shot of them standing with their eyes cast away, her fingers still clutched around her sliver of Earth. Garrus' arms hung at his sides, still and loose. He motioned for her to sit down, "So, is that what want to say?"

Jane went to her couch, her legs crossed and eyes glazed. "Well--a little more concise than that." She looked at the camera, "I want to say that everything we did was worth dying for, even though I'm grateful we didn't. I want to say that I see this," she held up the glass. "I see home in the people who have served with me on this ship, regardless of where they came from or what they've done." Her face was solemn, "I am indebted to each of you, because you have kept me alive but you've also kept me sane. You are my friends and if you need me, you'll have me. I know so much of this seems out of our control, but we triumphed anyway. So thank you, for your service and your friendship." Her face split with a grin, "We're going to have a lot of Reaper ass to kick soon--so get ready." 

The screen slipped into blackness.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

Garrus folded his hands together, “I edited out the other footage. I know I could have gotten rid of the beginning bit but I wanted you to see it, ma’am.”

Hannah rubbed the drive between her fingers; when she smiled he saw her daughter beaming at him. “Thank you. But you’ll have to do more than show me a home video.”

He paused, gathering his words. When he spoke he looked directly in her eyes, “I understood so much more about Shepard--about Jane--after she showed me that snow globe.” She listened, her gaze half-lidded but attentive. “Anyone who joins the Alliance, C-Sec, the Spectres--we do it for our own reasons. There are good and bad officers, corrupt and just; the best of us, though, are the ones who have something to protect. We fight the hardest and the longest, even when we know failure is spitting in our faces. The reason Jane fought, the reason she was the leader and soldier she is,” Garrus clenched his hands. “You gave her that. And now we need it again, her greatness and goodness. Please help us find her." 

A long sigh punctuated the end of his speech; Hannah Shepard was pinching the bridge of her nose. Her face went slack and she collapsed into her chair, chest rising and falling slowly with each breath. One eye opened, “Does the Council really need her back?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “But her friends need her back too.”

“She didn't make friends like you when she was younger,” Hannah blinked both her eyes open and allowed herself a small smile. “There was something about the Normandy that brought out her best.”

“I know,” Garrus’ mandibles flexed. “I felt the same way, we all did.” He leaned forward, placing his hands on her desk, “Please, I know you want your daughter to come back too. Can you help me?”

For a moment, the admiral’s face was perfectly blank. Then she pushed back from her desk and walked over to a small cabinet she opened, revealing a tiny fridge, and pulled out a carafe of water that she poured into a highball glass and gulped down. She poured a second glass, drank it, put the carafe and glass away and went back to her desk, her hands shaking. She sat back down and looked into his eyes, her lips drawn into a thin line. They parted and she spoke: “I don’t know where she is. We haven’t talked in almost a year.” Hannah Shepard watched Garrus over her folded hands. “I think something’s wrong. Not with Janey. No, I think someone’s been putting off our calls. I think it’s whoever helped her disappear.”

“Could you give me any messages you received from her? If there’s a chance we could get some trace of her location, or just where it was sent from--it’d help. When was the last you heard from her?” Garrus rested his elbows on his legs, brow plates drawn low in a frown.

“I’ll give you whatever you need. The last time Jane and I met up was--” Hannah Shepard closed her eyes and her head tilted. “It was last November.”

“That’s , uh, almost a year ago you said?”

“Yes, standard time it was about nine months ago.” Hannah glowered, “She usually tries to see me about every three or four months. But we haven’t talked and there's been no mail. The last time we went this long without talking was when I thought she was dead.” An icy shadow passed over her eyes, and her jaw went tight. “I don’t think that’s the case this time, but something’s wrong.”

“Where did you meet up?”

“It’s somewhere different every time.” Hannah shrugged, “Last time it was in Milwaukee. That’s a city on Earth.”

“What did you talk about?” The cooperation the admiral gave him was surprising. He watched her face closely, noting the bags under her eyes and the thinness of her face and its lack of color. Those weren’t uncommon symptoms in positions of power but perhaps Hannah’s faded countenance was caused by something other than work. “Did she seem like she was nervous or worried about something?”

“No. It was the same sort of visit we always had. We spent the weekend together, driving around the Midwest. Not much to see in Wisconsin in November besides the leaves but it was just good to see her again. She told me she was doing well, happy at whatever two-bit job she’s holding down. Talking about her garden, the bounties she was taking in.”

“She’s been bounty hunting?” Garrus scratched his neck and nodded, “We might be able to trace her. She'd have to have a license.”

Hannah shrugged, “She’s never told me specifically where she’s been living. I stopped trying to bring it up. She’s put herself on a tight leash. I wasn’t suspicious about that until recently--when the messages and calls stopped coming.”

“Do you know if she’s been corresponding with anyone else?”

“No one she’s mentioned. But take this. It’s the only thing I’ve gotten from her since she quit the Alliance that’s got any sort of clue to where she went.” Hannah picked up one of the framed pictures off of her desk and turned it around. In it, Jane smiled, sweaty and bright with happiness; she was framed by an orange sunset there was a swathe of green surrounding her and part of a prefab house farther behind. Hannah chuckled, “She grows cacti now.”

Garrus felt his stomach wring itself at the sight of her face; he stroked Jane’s smile with a finger and laughed, “Cacti?”

“She loves her hobbies,” Hannah’s omni-tool lit up on her arm as she waved a hand over the picture. “It used to be puzzles when she was little.” His arm pinged and a screen popped up, a copy of the photo grinned at him in miniature. “Puzzles and collecting knick knacks. The pile of junk she left behind when she joined the Alliance is neck-deep.” Something silent and anguished crossed her face; the admiral aged a decade as shadows deepened in her eyes and the unhappy curve of her mouth. She rubbed the glass display of Jane’s photograph with a thumb, “It’s good you’re looking for her. She’ll be happy to see you again.”

A dark-haired assistant poked his head in to let her know an emergency meeting was being assembled. Hannah snapped back into herself, iron-faced. “Bah. Pirates again. Terrorists, really. I need to go.” She glanced at Garrus, “You took care of her for me, I haven’t forgotten that, young man.” She rose from her seat and moved around her desk, holding her hand out to him. “Bring my daughter back.”

“Yes ma’am.” Garrus shook her hand and saluted, watching the second deadliest Shepard march out of the room, grumbling to her assistant and straight as a razor. When he was alone he brought Jane’s picture up again, feeling a little like he was going to throw up. He ignored the sensation and made his way outside. He had a flight to Rannoch in seven hours but it wasn’t in anticipation of seeing Tali that had the back of his neck tingling. Omega was waiting for him.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

Jane turned over the spare part in her hand, feeling the weight of it in the center of her palm. It was late in the evening, the sun was just a sliver on the horizon and the sky was a bruised purple rapidly changing to black. She was alone at the mining headquarters. It was a bit of a dry spell for the company; drones had already located most of the obvious resources on the planet years ago. Now they were beginning to send out more sophisticated robots to drill into the earth and return with analyzed samples. Intai’sei wasn’t as rich as other places she’d surveyed for the Alliance, or Cerberus. But there was a healthy source of minerals scattered across its arid surface and its population made a comfortable living off of them.

In a few hours she would head home. It was Friday and, most weekends, she would have gone to the bar after work. But she was tired; Feron’s visit was a few weeks old but she was still fuming. She scratched her nose, setting the component back down to pick up a nest of wires. Her fingers combed through them and, as the AC hummed above her head, she glanced up with a smirk. “Hello Liara. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Liara stepped into the room, walking over and sitting down next to Jane at her workbench. “Your hearing is excellent.”

“Maybe,” Jane shrugged. “But we’ve shared a headspace more than once.” She set down the wires and rested her elbows on her table, eyes following her friend. “Do asari get more sensitive to each other after melding?”

“It is not entirely uncommon, if you are a biotic. It is odd that you would pick up on it, however.”

“I think I’m sensitive to it,” Jane leaned her chin on one hand. “Just not enough to have real abilities. Maybe all of the crap I’ve gone through has made me a bit special too, who knows.” She blinked and sighed, “This isn’t how I wanted your first visit to go, T’Soni. You could have at least come by the house instead of creeping behind doorways.”

“You know I’ve wanted to see you, Shepard.” Liara’s misty, blue eyes pinched with sadness. “It’s been too dangerous for either of us. We depend on our anonymity, and I wasn’t willing to risk that to indulge my own selfishness.” Her chin dropped to her chest, “ I am sorry I’ve kept away though. I have missed seeing you.”

Jane swiveled around to face her, brushing hair out of her eyes. “Liara, I’ve been out here for years; only half of that time was my own choice. I’ve made good friends with the people in Yamada and I’ve enjoyed the quiet--but I can’t keep waiting. I miss my crew. I don’t want the life I had before but I want to see the people who helped me survive it.” She reached out and squeezed Liara’s shoulder, “You need to tell me this is worth staying away from everyone I love. You need to make me see this isn't a waste of time.

“Feron had to convince you to even come see me--I know he did. You’ve been ignoring every invitation I’ve made for two years until I threatened mutiny.” Jane pulled her hand away and crossed her arms, “So tell me now, Liara T’Soni. Do I really need to stay here?”

Liara’s face flushed purple and she covered her mouth. At last she spoke: “Give me a little more time--a year, at most.”

“Another year,” Jane rubbed her forehead.

“Please, you know it’s not safe to go public yet. I am trying to find the people looking for you, and I’m not far off. If we can capture them, we’ll be able to trace their masters’ location. Then we move. Shepard, you have to say yes. I don’t know how else to keep you from harm.”

“They haven’t hurt anyone, they haven’t even tried to hurt people I care about to lure me out of hiding--are you sure we need to do this?”

“They’re plotting Shepard, they have time. We are in a vast game of strategy with foes who will outlive you by centuries. They’re being patient, they don’t need you, they want you.”

“I know.” Jane stalked away, knocking her head gently against the wall. “I’ve been having dreams about it. I don’t know what that means.” She spun around and looked at Liara from behind a tangle of bangs, “I’ll wait a little longer, but not much, Liara. I need to get out of here. I need to do something, or at least see my friends before everything goes to shit again.” She shook the hair from her eyes, “Can you at least tell me what you’ve learned so far?”

Liara ducked her head, “Not as much as I’d like. I know they’ve been spreading out, recruiting people. I’ve got agents on the more worrisome of them, monitoring their movements. I know they’re trying to find you again and I know they intend to spread their influence on a larger scale, I just don’t know how long that will take or when it will happen.”

“Liara, that’s not good enough,” Jane moved back and sat down. “Tell me what I can do, this is what I’m good at.”

“I know, I know,” Liara snapped. She blushed, “I’m sorry. There is so much to do, so much information to sift and assess.”

“You’re all right though? Is the base back up?”

“Very soon,” she nodded. “If you’d like, I can make space for you onboard.”

Jane raised her eyebrows, “Really? Well I’ll--I’ll consider it.” Her face wrinkled but smoothed after a moment and she smiled. “Will you let me do missions with Feron?”

“Absolutely not. It’s bad enough you’re still chasing criminals.” They both grinned at each other; Liara broke the gaze first and stood. “I have time to see your house, if you’d like.”

Jane swung out of her chair, “I would love it.”

“Feron says you have a lovely garden,” Liara said, following Jane out the door.

“Well it felt weird putting a huge aquarium in my apartment when I live on a desert planet. Especially since I gave away all the fish already.”

“And it wasn’t strange keeping a rodent on a warship?”

“Peepers was good for morale,” Jane chuckled. She put her arm around Liara’s shoulder, “And don’t you dare try and say otherwise.” They walked out to her car, flying off into the darkening sky.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been some time since I updated this and I'm sorry if anyone was disconcerted about that. It's been a particularly busy few months, which isn't an excuse as much as it is an apology. I'm going to try and have another chapter up next week. As usual, please forgive my typos and mistakes--I'd like to eventually re-write this entire story after it's finished. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and especially for comments and kudos.

**-000- Five Years Ago -000-**

She was in a cold place; like a speck of wriggling life encased in an icy, preserving gel. Everything around her was thick and viscous. The air moved groggily, sloshing around in her head as she tried to breathe. It was so dark. She struggled, twisting and writhing--screaming wordlessly into a silence that screamed back.

Years passed to decades to centuries to eternities. She fought on with fruitless defiance. But a quiet voice gradually speaking louder and louder in her head said it was irrelevant. She belonged here. She would never leave. And someday she would accept that and be content. They could wait.

Softly, so softly, a caressing touch brushed her cheek. It was the touch of dust and age beyond age. It was the touch of power and absolute control.

It was ice.

Jane’s eyes fluttered open, her bed was warm and her limbs were heavy with sleep. She couldn’t push herself up, and for a moment she panicked--the memory of her dream seeping into the day. But it passed and Jane hugged herself, breathing labored wheezes that made her shoulders tremble. She lay like this in bed, watching the shadows on the walls change as the sun rose and glared through her windows.

When her stomach grumbled the terror had faded to a gentle shiver at the very base of her gut. She left the bed unmade and tromped into her kitchen, pots and pans banging in a cacophony that almost drowned out the echo of the voice in the dark. Jane sat down to pancakes and eggs, still lingering on her nightmare while she ate.

It was not a frequent dream, for which she was grateful. But it was too regular, too similar every time. During the war she’d been disturbed by bad dreams, all of them running along a linear path of despair--all of them inhabited by a little boy she had failed. But her dreams on Intai’sei were different. They were exactly the same, unnervingly perfect in their repetition. They began about half a year into her life as Ashley Cooke and visited her once or twice a month. Was this normal? Was it the faint, early signs of mental illness? Her glossy head of hair tumbled around her eyes, perhaps she’d made the right choice to disappear for a couple years. If she was sick there was time to find out, on her own, and process it before telling her loved ones.

She spent the next few days contemplating her own mortality and trying to find a good, confidential doctor. She was on a lunch break, talking up the owners of the only bar in town--a husband and wife originally from Tanzania--when her omni-tool buzzed with an incoming message. She took it outside in a secluded spot, her brows furrowed at the ID: Nelita Collissi. Liara’s voice trembled over the line, her video screen disconnected, “Hello Lieutenant Cooke.”

“Hello Miss Collissi. I wasn’t expecting you to call. I’m glad though, how are you?”

“I’m concerned. We need to talk. I don’t know if I can discuss it in person or not but we need to speak about something important, as soon as you can get alone.” The sound of fear, like a creeping hand, inched its way out of Liara’s throat and Jane heard her choking on her words.

“What’s wrong?” Shepard felt her stomach seize in knots.

“You have to be alone. I can’t discuss this with the chance anyone else will hear it, please Shepar--Cooke.”

“This is serious? Did something happen? Is everyone okay?” She was pacing, one hand over her heart, feeling the thrum of ill omens underneath her fingers. _Dear God, sweet God. Don’t let them be hurt._

“Everyone is fine, for now. I’m worried about you. Extremely worried. Please--go home and lock the doors. Close the curtains and turn off the lights. We need to talk.”

“You need to give me something, Liara,” Jane hissed into her omni-tool.

“I--I noticed a few unusual arrests. People committing crimes and then--” Liara exhaled. “Reports of people committing crimes they are unable to recall. People going missing and turning up on the outskirts of Citadel Space with their memories blank. Descriptions of cold, dark places--”

Jane rocked back and forth on her heels, her free hand turning into a fist. “We knew they’d be moving around after the war.”

“But the watchers are gone! They’re gone or _dead_. I don’t think they’re keeping to the pact you made with them. You know what they are--what their species did. Just because they’ve kept to the shadows--I think they mean to reclaim their legacy. I think they mean to take you, to use you.” Liara’s voice rasped, “Please, go home. Lock your doors. We need to talk.”

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

Moraina shrieked and threw a ball of energy into the concrete floor of the under-basement she’d discovered at the Shadow Broker’s data bank. It blew a fist-sized hole at her feet and an explosion of of gray dust flew. The screens of dozens of computers were shattered into spider web cracks and control panels ripped out, their wires spewing like silicon entrails on the floor.  She had suspected this was what she’d find, but could not stem her fury.

She scrambled through the massive room, once an extensive dump of all things secret. All she found was a collection of detritus and insubstantial hints. Hours passed, perhaps half a day. Moraina raged on, her brain sizzling with thoughts too quick for her lips to articulate. She muttered loudly, cursing everything. Who or what had tipped off the Broker? Kaidan’s warning about Barla Von sizzled in her memory and she hissed a curse on his family and family’s family.

Weeks of investigation and effort had led her to this. She boiled at the gall of it, the pure and maddening uselessness of it all. She could only paw futilely at what scraps were left, seething.

There were a few morsels of information but none of them were useful or relevant. At least half of them were carefully constructed fakes--she could smell the bullshit. Two were half-destroyed discs which her omni-tool was able to decipher partially as conversations between Broker agents and a ‘green-eyed soldier.’ It was too coincidental and smacked of drama. The other clues she discovered were similarly styled as tantalizing hints of exactly the information she needed. Moraina gathered them up anyway, thinking about contacts she had with the skills to read the secrets behind the fiction.

She left the building and colony in a cloak of quiet rage; Shepard would be found. She would not accept anything less than total success.

* * *

Although the geth were decimated after the Crucible's firing, enough of their programming and memories were salvaged that a heated discussion erupted afterward about whether or not to revive them as a species. Shepard supported their return and so did many of the quarians--especially when a case was made for how useful they might be to the Fleet, if they chose to. The Council opposed the matter, but with much of their resources depleted or destroyed they had no power to stop Rannoch's new government from doing just that. What happened after was extraordinary. The geth made an astounding comeback, building a new consensus within a few years. Their help gave the quarians such an advantage that the former outcasts had the stability to have a real stake in the galaxy while other races were still struggling to recover. They were welcomed onto the Council five years after the Reaper Wars. Tali was still an admiral, a legend among her people, and Garrus suspected she'd be a Councilor before she turned fifty. When he arrived she'd greeted him from her palatial estate, the same place she'd claimed the day their forces reclaimed Rannoch; there was a memorial to Legion there he'd seen the unveiling of four years ago. 

His stay there was pleasant, if not helpful. Tali fumbled through most of the interview, bouncing her three year old daughter on one knee all the while. She was spare with her answers about Jane. After several minutes of cajoling she admitted, finally, that Liara called her a few days ago and implored her to reveal nothing to the investigation. “It’s not like I know much,” she’d said and shrugged. “But she insists that Shepard wants her privacy and I don’t like that the Council is trying to find her. You know they never gave her the credit she deserved. Now they want her to solve all their problems again? It’s not worth dragging her into it if she wants to stay away.” The conversation didn’t go much farther than that. Afterward he spent a day and a half on Rannoch, catching up with Tali and her family. She dropped him off at the shuttle station and sighed at his flight information. “You can’t be serious. It’s only gotten worse since after the war.” 

She put a hand on his arm before he boarded the ship to Omega. “Just remember you don’t have backup coming this time.” He felt guilty--before leaving he planted a bug in her house that set a program to collect certain files in Tali’s personal system, anything that mentioned Shepard’s name or was created around the time of her disappearance. He didn’t think anything new would turn up, but was unwilling to take the chance. Doing it felt like slipping into a piece of clothing two sizes small and prickly all over.

He left Rannoch half hoping the thing wouldn’t pick anything up at all. They were on good terms with each other, the chilly ache of their dead relationship was gone but their friendship was still strong. He put these worries aside, resting up on his flight. Garrus did not relish the meeting he arranged with Omega’s Aria T’Loak. He suspected she knew who he was, or at least considered him a strong candidate for Archangel’s identity. It didn’t worry him, no one was looking for Archangel anymore, but it was one more thing she knew about him rather than the other way around. The people who truly knew Aria were few enough that she probably counted them on one hand. If she had information on Shepard, it was good information. Not many had the clout to keep the Broker at bay--and T’Loak was influential enough to ignore Liara’s organization with a daredevil impunity. 

Aria had a file somewhere in Liara’s vast data reserves, a fat one no doubt, but she had the muscle and brains to keep it from intimidating her. She was no friend of Liara, unlike most of the other people he planned to interview. The difficult part would be convincing her to divulge her knowledge, if she had any. She respected Shepard and he was uncertain whether she would approve of the Council’s intent to find its missing spectre. But she'd accepted his request to meet without protest and he was curious to see what she was willing to talk about. 

The ship, a private vessel he had to pay an exorbitant fee to charter, arrived in a crush of traffic. Many of the ships going to Omega belonged to criminals or were working for Aria--usually both. When he got off at the docking bay there was a pair of batarians waiting for him, assault rifles strapped to their backs. They were leaning against a wall as he disembarked, smoking. They dropped their cigarettes on the ground and walked over. They kept their weapons holstered and he did likewise, cataloging the closest points of cover around him.

“Spectre, Aria T’Loak is expecting you,” the one on the right spoke in a breathy timbre and all four of her eyes glowered at him. She was squat and wide next to her companion, who was the slightest batarian Garrus had ever met. Their features were ragged but their clothes clean and well-kept. “We leave now to Purgatory.”

“Fine,” he nodded and followed them through the weaving crowds of surly-faced Omegans. The stench was familiar, so was the noise and sweaty air. Life beat here, frantic and dangerous. He had no nostalgia for Omega’s dim byways, but the allure of his past failures was potent. His plates itched with a deep-down crawling sensation that made his muscles stiffen and his head ache. On the SR-2 Jane hated bringing him along when work brought her to this pisshole. She’d said he got too quiet and thoughtful and it made her twitchy. Garrus had not been back for nearly ten years and he couldn’t tell if it was eagerness or disgust squirming in his chest.

Purgatory, only a brief trek from the docks, loomed lurid and smug in the distance. There was a small bubble around his escort, people naturally giving them a slight berth. He wished, faintly, that it was because of him. They breezed past the line of waiting clubgoers, the batarians nodding at the human bouncer who floated a switchblade in her hand. She nodded back, eyes lidded with boredom, as she sneered at a complaining patron, giving him a little push with her biotics when he tried to get in her face.

It surprised him, still, how little everything changed. Omega was not directly attacked by Reapers--although their foot soldiers began to bombard it late in the war according to reports. Apparently Cerberus’ occupation harbored unexpected benefits; perhaps the Reapers planned to control  the semi-indoctrinated troops and monsters the Illusive Man’s scientists developed. Whatever the reason, Aria had her little queendom back and thriving in almost no time at all. It wasn’t the first time she’d rebuilt the settlement from the bottom up.

Neon flames dazzled the walls of Purgatory’s gateway, leading him into the flashy dank of Omega’s heart. Dancers flailed with a desperate sexuality and bartenders watered their swaying patrons with booze. These places bored him; his grunt years at C-Sec had an immunizing effect on stripclubs. Again, people parted before them and he navigated the press of bodies without trouble. He was led up into Aria’s overlooking nook and scanned by a grim salarian who nodded to the asari reclining on the couch.

Aria T’Loak looked Garrus up and down; she gestured to a space adjacent to her cushion. He dropped his bag at his feet and sat, “I’m here about Shepard.”

“I know. You’re not stupid enough to come back here for anything less.” Aria examined her nails, “Is the Shadow Broker making things difficult for you?”

“They’re trying. It’s why I’ve come here--you’re not afraid of them.”

“No.” Aria looked up and jerked her head at the guards. They dispersed to the stairwells and left Garrus alone with her. She looked into his eyes, “Why is the Council looking for Shepard now?”

“Why not? They need her.”

“Have they not told you? Do you care?” Aria’s questions were not directed at him and she stroked her chin, shrugging. “You were close, I could tell. She was always on her toes whenever you came along to see me.” She paused and chuckled, “She was awfully fond of all her flock.”

Garrus shrugged, “She was a good commander. Look, I won’t linger if you can’t help.” He folded his hands over his knees, watching her expression.

Aria slid her eyes, beautiful and beastly, back to him. “What am I getting out of it if I do give you something?”

“It depends. I’ve been given a lot of leeway for this mission. What are you asking for?”

Her face furrowed, “A blank check? You’re a better haggler than that.”

“I haven’t been checking up on you, T’Loak. Am I supposed to know what you want?”

Her purple fingers folded neatly on her lap and Aria shifted in her seat, head tilted as she thought. After a moment she turned to him, “I want to know who instigated the investigation, and I want to see Shepard first if you find her. You’ll deliver a message as well.”

Garrus sat back, his brow plates raised. “You think I’m going to pull this off?”

“I think the Council is actually trying to find her, so there’s a better chance this time.” She let her head rest on one hand, “And they picked the right person to do it. You have a reputation for tenaciousness. Foolhardy tenaciousness,” she grinned. “But you survived Shepard’s war, so you’re at least shrewd, if not incredibly lucky.”

“So do you know something?” The first investigation had not bothered to plum Shepard’s underworld contacts--Aria T’Loak was ignored completely. He’d never negotiated a meeting on his own before, not entirely sure she’d acknowledge their acquaintance. Now he was on her couch; this development in their relationship made his nerves thrum like an untuned instrument.

Aria unfolded her hands and leaned toward him, “Before she cut contact with everyone Shepard sent me a farewell letter.” She smirked, “I was surprised--touched even. In it, she asked me for a favor--she wanted me to keep something safe. She also asked me to shelter her, if things got out of hand. I accepted; a few months after she officially disappeared Shepard made a stop at Omega.” Aria crossed her legs a drew in a breath of air, her eyes closed and mouth set in a peaceful line.

“She came in disguise and only stayed one day.” A lurid smile crept onto her features, “I don’t fantasize about many things--” Aria stopped, eyes resting on him a moment before flicking away. “Shepard left behind a small package. I opened it, since she didn’t ask me not to--” Garrus frowned at her. “It was an emergency stash. Plan B in a box. Something to pick up and run with.

“I was surprised, I figured she’d already made preparations in whatever hole she’d thrown herself into. There were coordinates, in ciphers of course, to other locations. I had them decoded, I’ll give you the list. She had some of those awful, portable rations--the pills--to last at least a month or two. Some credit chits, three or four fake ID’s. There was also an omni-tool, very stripped down. It’s only function is to call a single line--also encrypted. I wasn’t able to trace it.”

Aria paused, stretching for a moment, her gaze lingering on a pair of dancers reflected in the windows of her perch. She motioned to one of her guards, “Tela’s high. When the song changes get Demos to switch her out. And let her know if she does it again she’ll be trading in her heels for a fucking mop.” She turned back to Garrus, “I will give you everything in the box she left behind--after I’ve transcribed my message for her and you sign a written agreement swearing you’ll do as I ask.”

Garrus sat up, “I’ll do it.”

Aria nodded once, a smug, feline smile arched on her mouth. “Good.” She gestured at the guards again, “Get Kara Vall up here. I need him to draw up a binding contract.”

“So am I getting a call from your lawyers if this doesn’t work out?” Garrus cracked his neck, rolling his shoulders. He wanted to take a walk, the flight here was long and he’d spent all of it cramped in a chair not meant to accommodate the curve of a turian cowl. In four days another ship would pick him up and he’d be off to his next interview. There were still people on Omega he knew, an even smaller number of them were worth visiting, he’d hoped to put the extra days to good use. When he contacted Aria Garrus didn’t expect her to keep him long, now he was reconsidering his schedule. If she could be counted on to help he might have real evidence for the investigation to latch on to. He’d need a day or two of peace just to sort through Shepard’s things and catalogue clues.

A harried volus was ushered over to Aria while Garrus stewed. The volus presented a tablet to Aria, who cleared her throat and held it out to Garrus between pinched fingers. “Sign this,” she stood and dropped it in his lap and nodded at her guards. “Tell Demos I’m out for the day.” She was down the stairs and halfway to the door when he caught up with her, handing off the tablet to the volus.

“I should demand more from you,” Aria smiled with too many teeth. “Being seen going home with me--you’re getting a ‘do not fuck with’ pass for free.” She glanced at  him as they arrived at a vehicle that was worth more than the lease on his apartment. “What was your name again?”

Garrus paused, then put a hand over his face and laughed. After a moment he composed himself, “Garrus Vakarian. Spectre for the Council and occasional diplomat for the Hierarchy--when they can’t get anyone else, that is.” He didn’t offer her his hand.

Aria got into the car and he slipped into the passenger seat. When the door closed the engine started and they zipped away from Purgatory. “Garrus Vakarian,” she crossed her arms, the automatic navigation system ducking and weaving through traffic. “I always thought of you as That Idiot Vigilante.”

He chuckled, “Did Shepard tell you?”

“She didn’t need to. I knew who you were as soon as the bullets stopped flying. She came looking for Archangel and Mordin Solus and left after collecting you both. It was an easy guess.” Aria’s gaze was on the landscape, taking in the smog and buildings, the lights of the city flashing in her irises. “You did me a favor culling the mercenaries. And you weren’t such an idiot that you tried to come after me. So I let Shepard take you off my rock--I didn’t need her blowing half of it up because I killed her pet turian.”

Garrus kept his eyes on his hands, where they flexed in his lap. “Are you really going to help me find her?”

Aria made a noise that was half-way between a laugh and grunt, “I don’t like that she’s been off the grid for so long. And not just to the general public--she dropped out of _life_. It pisses me off.” He looked up and saw her grimace, “People like her--people like us, we don’t get to run away.” Aria turned her narrowed eyes on him, “Omega is mine because I came here and I put my arms elbow deep in shit. She needs to pick her ass up back from whatever backwater colony she’s hiding on and get back to work.”

There was no conversation for the rest of the ride. They arrived in a part of Omega Garrus was unfamiliar with. The streets were cleaner, hustling bodies didn’t clutter the sidewalk, and when he stepped out of Aria’s car he swore the air smelled the faintest bit fresher. It was a small, affluent pocket he’d heard of but never visited. Aria’s car parked itself inside her garage, four other vehicles kept its company. She led him into a colossal mansion of muted elegance. None of this was startling until he saw Shepard’s portrait suspended in the foyer of her house.

She noticed him staring; it was a large painting of Jane reclining in a chair with a highball glass hanging from her hand. There was half a smile on her face and some hair in her eyes. Her legs were crossed and her head was tilted, lips parted and cheeks pink. She was in her Alliance uniform and, despite the formality of her dress and casual posture it smacked of sensuality. His consternation delighted Aria, who looked up at the painting with fond possessiveness. “I tried to convince her to do a nude but she was prudish. This was after the war, a few years before she left. Shepard liked to check in on me every so often, to make sure I wasn’t getting too despotic. I don’t think she told any of you,” Aria’s looked at him sideways with a smirk.

“I didn’t realize you and Shepard were so--” Garrus struggled to put a label to a relationship that seemed in every way antithetical.

“I’m sure you can imagine the number of people I have actual respect for in this galaxy.” Aria brushed past him with a shrug. “The ones I’m also interested in screwing are even scarcer.” He frowned at her back, following her down a long hallway of mounted lamps and other portraits; one of them looked so much like Wrex he nearly asked her the sitter’s name. Instead he wondered if all her home tours began with the suggestion of intimate encounters with Jane Shepard. Garrus tugged at the neck of his cowl, the distinct suspicion Aria was being territorial tickling the edges of his brain.

That was--he wanted to shake his head, he wasn’t sure what it was. Shepard would have mentioned a tryst with Omega’s matriarch. Garrus hesitated; she would, wouldn’t she? A bitterness he had no words for settled like a pall over his head. He had not seen Jane in six years, what changes happened in that long absence? And even before, what did he overlook that stopped him from realizing she was about to leave the galaxy behind like a jilted lover? His jaw clamped down tight as a vice. After a moment he relaxed; no, he shook his head, this was a bad road to travel and he needed his head clear. He paused, Aria led him into an office that was smaller than he expected. It was the size of a large closet and modestly furnished. She unlocked a desk drawer and pulled out a box that was slightly larger than his head. Placing it on top of the desk, she gestured at it.

“You keep it here?” Garrus walked over, his palms resting on the top.

“I have trackers on everything, the kind you can’t remove or disable. If anyone really was enough of an idiot to try and rob me I’d want to deal with them myself.” Aria pulled off the lid, pushing his hands away and peered inside. “Take it all. It’s been sitting here long enough." She lifted her eyes to him, they were glowing with anger. “Bring her back.” She slammed the lid back on and thrust it at him.

Garrus could only nod, lifting the box to his chest where it pressed against the armor in his tightening grip. Aria scrutinized him, head tilting while he stood with his head bowed. At last she nodded, and held a small disc out from another drawer in the desk. “This is the message I want you to give Shepard when you find her.” He didn’t reply, not sure anything he could say about Aria’s pre-recorded love letter wouldn’t end with his ribs pulverized. “I don’t feel like I need to say not to listen to it, but I will anyway, since you have a reputation for being a hardheaded ass,” Aria continued, turning her back to him and leaving the office.

She waited for him to follow and nodded her head down the hallway, “Now get out. Someone will be waiting for you outside. There's a ship in the docks that will take you wherever you need to go. I want you off Omega today.” She crossed her arms, “Trusting you with something this important is making my skin crawl.”

“Could you give me a few hours at least--”

“No. Make your social calls when I’m not in the mood to crush your skull with my fist.” Aria’s mouth hardened, lines of age and contempt outlined her expression with malice. “If I could give this to anyone else I would. But Shepard trusted you and you’ve proven yourself competent.” Her eyes, hard and blue has jewels, were leveled on his face, “I don’t have to like you to give you a job. Now leave.” Her shoes clicked against the floor, the sound diminishing to a menacing clip in the distance; she did not turn back to watch him go.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, please forgive my typos and grammatical errors. Thank you for reading and especially for people who leave comments and kudos.

**-000- Nine Years Ago -000-**

Jane limped up and down the row of recruits, more than half of whom she’d chosen personally. “You need to be careful,” she intoned. “You need to be just paranoid enough to keep alert but not drive yourself crazy. You need to be suspicious, you need to be vigilant, and most of all you need to know each other. Look around, memorize the faces of your new family. They are your only safeguard.”

The men and women arrayed before her were all veterans. Some were of the informal N7 corps that held strategic posts across the galaxy. Others were former military and still more were from the Leviathan Enthrallment Operation. Each of them proven survivors and all of them highly recommended. Individually they were briefed on the dangers and realities of what their post would entail; the recruits with her now were the ones who agreed to take the job in spite of its risks. Shepard surveyed their number, a little over two hundred. She was in her rear admiral’s uniform, crisp and new from her recent promotions; although she was still walking with an assistive cane she cut a handsome figure. She took a breath, feeling tenderness in her ribs and bad knee.

“I want each of you to take a good, long stare at me. You and I have something in common: we’re alive--despite the worst the galaxy threw at us. We are statistical anomalies and goddamn miracles. But I’m a little different,” she smiled. “Not because of who I am, but because my mind was shackled.” A soft ripple of murmurs fluttered across the crowd like a bird ruffling its feathers.

“I was not indoctrinated by the Reapers--but I didn't escape from the Leviathans unharmed. I went looking for them, was forced to confront them. They took my mind,” her eyes closed. “I couldn’t do anything.” Shepard gripped the head of her cane as she took a few shaky paces forward. “I am only here today because I convinced them to join the fight. Now? Now we need to watch them. This is a species which built their entire culture around slavery and false godhood. ” A sneer snarled her lips, “But we are stronger. We destroyed the Reapers, who brought their kind low.” Her voice built, thunder on the air, “We fought not only to preserve our lives, our histories, our planets--we did it to be the arbiters of our own destiny.” Her glance sent a shiver over the hearts of the audience, “That is what you must be. Sentinels of our destiny.”

Shepard bowed her head, “Some of you may wonder why I was allowed to forge this operation, being under their control. How can I be trusted? What if I’m working for them? Well I have one small bit of good news: enthrallment is not voluntary. If someone is enthralled they are being forced against their will to perform the actions a Leviathan commands. It's an imperfect sort of control. The Reapers perfected what their predecessors capitalized on; indoctrination was subtler, and more terrifying. It changed your thoughts, your beliefs, and it made you their pawn. Enthrallment hijacks your body; if you take the time to know the people around you it can be identified and stopped.” It was a dubious honor to be trusted to organize their number. She knew she wasn't being controlled, but no one else did. But she was personally known to half the governing powers left in the galaxy and all of them were betting on her perceived freedom. Jane was not a little aware of her reputation as the expert for dealing with incomprehensible horrors. It made her feel prickly with unease. 

Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath, letting her eyes close and thoughts rearrange themselves. Months ago Anne Bryson reached out, claiming she’d been plagued by dreams which ordered her to contact Shepard. Soon after, one of the pearly artifacts familiar to both women turned up in her proximity, placed there by an unknown agent. It frightened Anne and she begged Jane to reply, if only to placate the aliens who’d killed her father. Shepard tried to arrange for a different representative, but they refused to negotiate with other parties. She smashed the glass table in her new, Alliance office in a fit of terror and rage at the answer. Shepard cleaned the mess up herself, cutting shaking fingers on the shards while plotting contingency plans. She pulled up her notes, sending for Liara’s and Anne’s observations, along with records from EDI’s salvaged memory.

It took weeks of preparation before she felt any confidence. She set the meeting on an unpopulated and mostly aquatic world away from 2181 Despoina--curious to see if the Leviathans had interstellar transportation. They replied via Anne and agreed, disconcerting everyone by confirming the creatures could move between mass relays. She arrived on the planet alone on an automated ship, her suit outfitted with hundreds of sensors. Most, she knew, would short out. She warned them that if all her communication and monitoring systems went dark and her meeting was longer than three hours a fleet of ships would bombard the planet.

She submerged her craft on the appointed date and location; after a few minutes of descent her body seized up. She went to the cold, dark place where Anne Bryson spoke to her in a voice that was guttural and old while other humans with faces like masks interjected. They spoke to her of many things. Their efforts in the war, her victory, the death of the Reapers’ creator. They probed her mind for information, assessed her weaknesses, and made no promises or threats. They allowed only one admission: they were not ready to address the galaxy at large yet. Perhaps they would never be ready. But she felt a lingering wariness, Jane could sense their arrogance--it was like a bitter tang in her mind. They still considered themselves the apex of evolution.

Only a few remained of a race that spanned all the known galaxy--beyond the Council’s scope, beyond the Prothean Empire. They were in a place of precarious opportunity, and they were willing to be patient. These were not thoughts presented to her but feelings she absorbed. And she couldn’t know if they were true. Nothing she knew of them might be true.

They released her, for the second time, and Jane returned to her friends and colleagues dazed but unharmed. No one on the crew was pleased, her core squad had a host of things to say about the reunion. She found it difficult to recall anything within forty-eight hours of the meeting, however. There was a certain haze around her memory that was like a thick skein of wool obscuring the details. It struck her with the same unease she felt about the two years she spent as a dead woman--just blank time she couldn’t wrap her mind around.

The feeling spurred a proposal to form the group of men and women before her. The official name was Project Lovecraft but she thought of them as the Watchers. All the major races sent representatives, although the existence of the Leviathan species was still tightly controlled information.

Jane hoped her efforts would only prove a necessary precaution; she prayed the Reapers were her last great foe. That her relevance would only last another decade or two before she was comfortably relegated to the history books. She was not sure if this weariness would pass or if she had spent all her vigor in the war. She was barely in her mid-thirties and could not help comparing herself to Hackett, who had yet to breathe a word about retirement.

A significant silence fell on the company as Jane came back from her contemplation. She straightened her spine and slammed the butt of her cane on the ground, “You are not serving one people but all peoples. You are sisters and brothers in arms and if you remember that then you will not fail.” Jane raised her hand, fingers brushing against her bangs as she saluted in a sharp motion. Hundreds of hands mirrored hers and as Jane swept over them one last time, she felt a little relief uncoil in her belly.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present -000-**

Two months passed since they’d separated and the time for their meeting arrived. Kaidan was the first to show up, he’d stayed on the Citadel for almost all eight weeks. Moraina Novani arrived shortly after, stomping into the private room he arranged. She sat down at the long table that stood center of the room and heaved a sigh so loud it echoed off the walls. Kaidan sat opposite to her, his hands interlocked in front of him, a few written notes at his elbow. He waited for her to speak while she mumbled into her lap. After several minutes he rolled his eyes, “Did you get to the data the Broker was sending from the spaceport?”

“Nothing. There was nothing.” Moraina’s head was on the table, her hands massaged the back of her neck. “I found nothing. The clues that did turn up were carefully placed fakes.” She looked up, “I was at least good enough to recognize that. I’ve been chasing other leads down in the meantime and it’s been shit.”

Kaidan’s mouth thinned to a tight line, “So what have you got?”

Her dark eyes flickered up to him and she grimaced, “I’m following up on one of the other Broker agents at Trebin from some trace information I was able to squeeze out of those fake clues. Since you brought up suspicions about our volus friend, I decided not to approach her directly. I’ve been stalking her for the past few weeks. I broke into her house and went through a few private files. I found one mention of our target, and it wasn’t by name. A note about an ‘important associate of the Broker’ coming through the station around the right time. I did find out she boarded a commercial flight from Thessia, not a private shuttle.” Moraina rested her chin on the palm of her hand, “Everything else was political dirt I scanned and copied out of habit.”

His eyebrows scrunched, “Well Vari was able to give a vague timeline of the day she disappeared, so we know the flight happened in the late afternoon.” He stroked his jaw, “Let’s start picking up whatever information we can from Trebin about takeoffs during that period.”

“She could have bounced between ten different stations before she got off anywhere, Alenko.” Moraina sat up and squinted at the ceiling, her arms crossed and left foot tapping on the floor.

“And if we can find a trail of security footage of Shepard being at those stations we might be that much closer to figuring out where she ended up.” Kaidan exhaled, “Even if it’s been six years.”

“That’s assuming the Broker didn’t fix all the cameras for her.” Moraina frowned, “Their relationship with the admiral is--” she paused and her face wrinkled. “It feels intimate, or maybe I mean obsessive. Do you think your admiral has a personal connection with the Shadow Broker?”

Kaidan shrugged, “The longer I knew her, the more I realized I didn’t.”

Moraina’s canny eyes narrowed on him and she sat forward, leaning across the table they shared. “So--are you two still friends?”

“That was a quick subject change.” He glowered at her and she smiled, shrugging.

“Are you?”

“It’s irrelevant.”

“You were specifically chosen by Vilus because of your relationship with her. It’s relevant.” Moraina steepled her fingers, “Is she going to want to see you?”

Kaidan pushed his chair back, “You’re really going to make an issue of this?”

“If it’ll help me understand your old commander better, yes.”

“It won’t.” He stared at her with dull, flat eyes. Then he opened his mouth, “We’ve had a complicated dynamic but were both professional enough to let it be.” He paused, his head tilting and his expression thoughtful. “She’s good at forgiving people.”

At his words Moraina pursed her lips and they both broke off their gazes. The silence roared; she fiddled her hands until Kaidan got up from his chair and walked over to a side table where he poured himself a cup of coffee. She kept her eyes on her lap, “They have files about the two of you.”

He looked over at her, “I know. I’ve read them. The Council keeps better tabs on their spectres than most people think.”

“It’s a selective sort of monitoring,” she folded her hands in her lap. “They like to know enough about us to judge our character and keep us in check without knowing enough about our activities to avoid implication.”

“They didn’t seem to mind having a racist sociopath on the payroll,” Kaidan’s chuckle was low and bitter.

“Are you talking about Arterius or--”

He turned on her, “Who the hell else would I be talking about?”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve met a lot of assholes.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all.” Kaidan rubbed his forehead, breathing deep. “It’s the kind of people our line of work attracts.”

Moraina grinned, “Racists?”

“Bastards who don’t give a shit about anything but the results.”

“The Council chooses their spectres carefully, Alenko. Some of it may be politically motivated, but it’s our histories they pay the most attention to.” She closed her eyes, “When I was offered the job it was over another asari--daughter of this matron general. I can’t remember her name anymore,” she shrugged. “Tevos had only been on the Council a few decades and had a flock of political opponents looking to take advantage of her mistakes.” Moraina laughed, “She took me aside after my enlistment and basically said, ‘Fuck this up and I’ll bury you.’ Tevos caught a lot of flak for picking me but I made sure she didn’t regret it.” She watched him from half-lidded eyes, “All of us have stories like that of one sort or another.” Her smile was faint, “You would know, Alenko. Your recruitment was rather dramatic, as I recall.”

His face grew long with memory--then he laughed. “You know, I bet I’m not the only spectre to shoot the Councilor who appointed them.”

“I’d be shocked if you were.” She sprawled in her seat and put a foot up on the table. “So where is Vakarian? I got a confirmation from him that we were definitely meeting. Think he’s in trouble?”

“Garrus is always in trouble.” Kaidan combed through his hair with one hand, glancing at the door. “He’s been that way since we met. Worse, actually. The Normandy did that to him,” he paused. “Or maybe just exacerbated the problem. Don’t worry, if he really wasn’t coming he’d call.”

“I thought he’d be bored with his side of the assignment, actually. Doing interviews on a case like this is usually tiresome.”

“I’d be inclined to agree if I didn’t know some of those people he went off to meet. Assassins, criminals, warlords, thieves, doctors, geniuses, heroes.” Kaidan leaned against the wall, nursing his cup, “She was a collector of unusual individuals.”

“Including you?”

“By default, yeah.”

They both turned as the door whooshed open, the hum of biotic energy in the air and their hands straying to their pistols. Garrus stepped in, an enormous varren on his heels. “Sorry I’m late, had to pick up Vix from my friends. I would have dropped her off at home but I didn’t want the two of you thinking I’d been kidnapped.” The varren loped around him and straight to Kaidan, pawing at one of his feet as she panted.

“Dear Goddess, they let things like this on the Citadel?” Moraina said as she got up to scratch Vix’s spine ridge. “You didn’t actually do the paperwork for her, did you?”

“The permit for large animals, particularly any species from Tuchunka, is one thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight pages with a nine thousand credit fee. So no, I didn’t.”

Kaidan pet the varren’s head, rubbing the base of her massive jaw. “Glad you’re back. Novani was just saying she hasn’t had much luck. But she did find something that we can pursue.”

“What is it?” Garrus dumped his bag on the floor, the butt of a gun poking out the top. He looked tired, but unruffled.

“I found out she was on a commercial flight out of Trebin. Alenko wants to start combing through footage of every station the admiral might have gotten off at.” She nuzzled Vix’s face, “I don’t know if it’s worth it--depends on what you did or didn’t find out.”

“What about you, Alenko? Anything interesting?” Garrus sat down at the table and tapped his leg. Vix shuffled back to him and lay down at his feet.

“I found that one of our fake C-Sec cops may or may not be a dead woman named Rixis Tulvaro. I’ve been trying to track down people who knew her but it’s difficult. Most of them have passed on or died in the war. At the moment I’m looking into finding some coworkers of hers from a catering company she was employed at.”

“Sounds good,” Garrus nodded. “It’s more than we started out with, at least.”

“Three months of bare-boned hints isn’t how I like to work.” Moraina was back in her chair, face grim.

“I may have something that will change your mind about that,” a low laugh rumbled in Garrus’ throat. “Courtesy of Shepard’s old pal Aria T’Loak.” He went over to his duffle bag, unzipping it and removing the box, setting it on top of the conference table. Moraina and Kaidan peered at it with pinched mouths and frowning eyes.

“I wasn’t sure if you were serious about going to Omega.” Kaidan looked up at Garrus, “I was almost hoping you’d let me or Novani handle that.”

“It was too important to let wait, and I’m glad I didn’t. Aria was more forthcoming and helpful than I thought. And she seemed sincere about it too--although I think we need a squad of techies check this out anyway, just in case.”

“So she _was_ friends with T’Loak.” Moraina leaned over the table, “What is this?”

“Shepard entrusted it to Aria shortly after she disappeared, apparently. It’s got coordinates to safespots, prepared identities, food, and most interestingly an omni-tool with a line to someone or someplace.” Garrus had opened the box and laid out its contents in a neat row across the tabletop. “The safespots are all here on a file T’Loak gave me, although I think it’s best if we have our own people doublecheck the data. But first I want the omni-tool cracked. It could be totally mundane, but it’d be worth the time to see anyway.” Kaidan’s hands were on the omni-tool, the one he wore on his wrist powered up and the screens whirled with activity.

“This is--I remember this one. It’s the Savant she got from that engineer when we stopped the terrorist attack on Terra Nova.”

“Oh hell, with the batarians.”

“Something I should know?” Moraina cocked her head at them.

“Old news,” Garrus shrugged. “We stopped a group of batarians from dropping a meteor on a human settlement. Shepard charmed this omni-tool off one of the people we saved.” He looked up at the ceiling, brow plates furrowed, “She was excited about it.”

“Damn fine model, even today.” Kaidan brushed it with his thumb, “She modded the hell out of it. I couldn’t believe the crap she could get this thing to do.” He looked up at Moraina and Garrus, “She retired it after we blew Sovereign up. It’s in good condition, probably just sat around gathering dust after the Collector incident on the SR-1.” A lump jumped once in Kaidan’s throat.

“We’re going to need somebody good to find out where the line goes to. I’ve got a few friends I can call. One in particular, if I can find her.”

“I have two I can think of off the top of my head,” Moraina rubbed her chin. “And at least one is on the Citadel right now.”

“Let’s get that done then.” Kaidan set the omni-tool back down, “And get started on those vid files at all the space ports.”

* * *

 

Garrus was waiting. He was waiting at his house, in his study, seated at his desk. A little less than six hours ago he’d sent a message.

He let his fingers draw over his face, a sigh heavy with weariness drew out of his mouth. A break, finally a break. A real one that might bring them to Shepard, to Jane, and do away with Liara’s machinations. This felt like a long awaited reward even though he knew it was only another step in a series of goals he had not yet achieved. He also knew there was more waiting ahead until their people decrypted the omni-tool--if they could. His gut clenched like a closed fist, he had no more patience. In his mind he’d already decided that this was it, this was the clue that would break the case.  

His eyes wandered to the thresher maw photo, back in its usual spot after his trip. He picked it up and rubbed the frame with his thumb; Vix was asleep at his feet and his house was silent. Garrus tugged at his cowl, he needed sleep. Sitting here, letting his feelings eat him up, this was what he used to do when he was a rookie, a boy playing at manhood. Action, his father’s words reprimanded, is always preferable to stagnation. He got up from his desk and stumbled into his bedroom, waking Vix from her nap. She followed him to bed and made a large and very warm pillow.

For four, brief hours he slept with one arm resting on his varren, dreamless and still. Then his omni-tool lit up. It took him almost an entire, sluggish minute to realize what the pinging noise was. His hand went over his face, blocking light from the screen as he brought up the call. “Vakarian here,” he slurred.

“Garrus!” Kasumi Goto’s laughing voice jarred him. “I almost wasn’t sure if it was really you, it’s been too long.”

“Glad you got my message, I wasn’t sure you would.” He’d gone to site that was so deep in the labyrinthine depths of the extranet it was like slipping into an exclusive club locked in an underground bunker at the bottom of an ocean. He left a vague message asking for the assistance of ‘the best’ in the business for an old friend from the SR-2. As he’d hoped, Kasumi picked up on it without a fuss.

“Of course I did, everyone perks up a little when we get something from a spectre. Those posts are always the most fun.” Kasumi’s hooded face grinned at him, “I cracked it already, in case you’re wondering.”

Garrus let out a startled bark of laughter, “What did you crack? I haven’t even asked the favor yet.”

“Well first I checked to see where you were and noticed you’d made a few interstellar excursions. You made it a little tricky but I saw you came from Omega and some hacked cameras showed you carrying a package out of Aria T’Loak’s house. I assumed that’s what you called about. Shortly after arriving at the Citadel there was an alert at C-Sec about a highly classified package delivered to their techies. So I broke in and took a look.” Her eyes darted around her hood, “I’m in here now. You should really tell the Council they need to invest in a more sophisticated security system. It’s pretty thorough but not that hard to break down if you know what you’re doing.” He sighed, the Council would pop if this got out. 

“No worries, Vakarian," Kasumi waved her hand. "Nobody has to know about it," she giggled. "I promise not to get you fired." 

“Thanks, Goto.” Kasumi was a whirlwind; he was perturbed by how quickly she’d pieced everything together. He hadn’t considered tapping her abilities to find Shepard--after all she’d only had minimal contact with the Commander during the war. His own shortsighted foolishness boiled up in his stomach; would Liara be fast on Kasumi's heels? 

“So, I got it working for you,” Kasumi’s smile was wide and smug. “Who or what is this about?”

“You decrypted the omni-tool but didn't check the contents? Color me impressed, Goto."

Kasumi threw her head back and cackled, "You sounded so desperate and clandestine in that message I felt sort of guilty invading your privacy."

"That's a damn lie."

"Hah! Okay, so I didn't go into because I knew it was Council stuff. I've learned from past mistakes, all right? I've had enough dramatic, galaxy-shaking material thrown at me. I'd just like to stick to simple larceny from now on, thank you."

"Thanks, Kasumi."

She beamed, "Now that I've proven my trustworthiness you should give me a little something about what this is." She held up the dormant computer, "Seriously, don't make me peek by keeping it all to yourself!" 

"I’m not supposed to say, but if you can promise me this is a secure line--”

“Of course it is!”

“Then I’ll say it’s about our mutual friend.”

“What? You mean--oh. Ohhhhh.” Kasumi tilted her head, “I haven’t seen her in forever. She’s been off the radar, and I mean _really_ off the radar.”

“Anything from the underground?”

“No, she’s not turning up anywhere. It’s fascinating, actually. You can’t just disappear like that out of the blue. She must have sunk a lot of resources into it.”

Garrus leaned closer to the screen, “Do you think you could help us?”

Kasumi’s mouth closed, “Sorry Garrus, no can do. I helped out already with the omni-tool but now that I know it’s about the Commander, I’m out. The Shadow Broker is all over her and I don’t need the extra attention. It’s bad they have a file on me. Worse if I stir the pot and get them riled up enough to come looking for more dirt.”

He sighed, “Not even if I beg?”

“Especially if you beg. I hate when people wheedle. You’d do better with a bribe.”

“What would I have to offer?”

Kasumi tapped her chin, “Hmmm. Well there’s all sorts of useful things I could do with in here--” She paused, then shook her head, mouth puckering in a frown. “No, sorry Garrus. It occurs to me that I made a promise to Shep.”

“She asked you not to come looking for her?”

“She politely asked me to refuse jobs that might include stealing information leading to her until she decides to come back out of retirement.” Kasumi smiled, “I was terribly flattered she considered me enough of a threat to her privacy to ask. Now I helped you do exactly that. It’s my bad, I should have asked what this was first.” She shrugged, a slight blush coloring her cheeks.

“You’re not going to take the omni-tool, are you? Because I really don’t want to start another investigation.” He was already poised to dial C-Sec, although he doubted anyone could catch Kasumi off-guard.

“Nope, fair is fair. It was my mistake, apologize to Shep for me if you find her.” Kasumi’s smile grew and Garrus relaxed, “I miss her. This is probably a good thing.”

“But you still won’t help?”

“Sorry, I may break a few promises here and there but I really don’t want to piss off the Space Messiah. That just sounds like bad karma.”

Garrus threw up his hand, “But you already did.”

“And I’m sure she’ll be gracious and forgive me since it was an accident. But if Shep doesn’t want to be found I’m not going to be the one who outs her. You should totally still do it though, I bet she’ll let it slide if you flash her the old baby blues,” she covered her mouth and giggled. Somehow over a decade later Kasumi still affected the same girlish exuberance she had when they first met. It made him feel twenty years older than he was.

“Well thanks for the help, if you change your mind let me know.”

“You’ll hear from me if you do.” Kasumi played with the edge of her hood, rolling the fabric between her fingers. “But I don’t know how much help I’d be anyway. We’re talking about real blackout operations here, Garrus. Whatever you try is going to demand a lot of time.”

“I sent out a post vaguely alluding to you on a message board less than half a day ago. You picked it up, traced my previous location, hacked Omega cameras, and then broke into a high security facility. Am I overestimating your abilities here, Goto, or what?”

“Not at all,” Kasumi purred. “I am that good. But that was tracking you, not Shep. She’s got the Shadow Broker covering her trail. That’s in a class of its own. And it wasn’t like hacking that omni-tool was easy. I called a few favors in to get it unlocked. And you weren't a picnic to follow either! I can’t magic away every problem, Garrus.”

“Kasumi, I get it. Thanks for doing what you did.”

She paused, her lips drawing together for a moment before she smiled. “No problem, Vakarian. Go find her. I’ll feel a little safer knowing she’s stomping around the galaxy again. And don’t worry, I won’t touch anything else in here.” Her face flickered off and Garrus’ mandibles clacked irritably on his jawline. He liked Kasumi but she wasn’t reliable. Not in a long term sense; the steadiest he’d ever seen her was on the Normandy. Still, this went better than he expected. He pushed away the sheets of his bed, Vix grumbling when he upset her nest of blankets. Kaidan and Moraina needed to know about this; he brought them up on a secure line before both his feet hit the floor.

* * *

 

Jane picked her teeth with her fingers, the pleasant heaviness of a good meal made her drowsy. In Ashley Cooke’s account was a fat deposit of credit from the asari government. An entire warehouse of illegal goods and Eclipse mercs had been neatly swept up by the local authorities. One merc captain was dead, the other was very alive and trussed up in a small broom closet. She left after making a call to the police. Sitting in the restaurant she considered what to buy with the new influx of cash she'd earned. Jane had set up a fake mercenary company run by the infamous Alison Gunn--her favorite alias. There was a long string of other fake accounts from which the money had bounced before finally landing in Ashley Cooke's bank. With some dedicated digging it wouldn’t be difficult to realize the company was a sham, but there was no reason to be suspicious until someone noticed a single woman took out over twenty mercs and both of their captains.

She was still on the colony, waiting for her shuttle back to Intai’sei. It would be a long trip; Liara requested that she move through several shuttle stations when she traveled off-world. Jane was not careless, but six years into her voluntary disappearance she felt safe enough to leave her sleepy, retirement planet without fear of incident, but placated her friend anyway. She liked spending time on ships too, as different as it was to ride a commercial passage than command a vessel in the Alliance. It comforted her to be in space; she was a spacer to the marrow.

Tomorrow she’d be back to her usual routine; there were some drones that needed maintenance and she wanted to pore over a few of the mineral reports for a short meeting with Daniel Tringali. Jane pursed her lips, her garden could use tending as well. She was thinking about extending it again, although now she had a jungle of cacti walling her prefab. Maybe it was finally time to build a greenhouse? There was a new species of hybrid orchids that were especially--

A soft beeping pulsed on her wrist and her thoughts shrank to a whisper. The caller ID was Operation Lazuli; this was the name of a mission she was assigned over twenty years ago when she was first inducted to N7. It was also the ID tag she’d given to her old Savant omni-tool, knowing there was no one who would be able to recognize the distinctive name. She sat there watching the call light blink as her brain began to feel its way around this unexpected interruption. So Aria finally cracked her encryption?

Jane left the Savant on Omega purely for a red button situation: if she needed to leave Intai’sei immediately without Liara’s interference. For that she wanted a safe place to stash her hideaway kit. And if there was one woman anyone hesitated to encroach on it was Aria T’Loak. Omega was her fortress and Jane knew it could shelter her, at least for a little while. She’d programmed her Savant to do a very simple task--should she ever need to contact Aria it would message her to pick it up, she could send this alert from anywhere. The Savant had as secure a line you could over the extranet, she built the security herself. The encryption was modeled after a code Kasumi had shown her once.

The small restaurant she ordered lunch from was quiet, almost empty. It was an odd hour of the day, too far past lunch and too early for dinner. Weighing her curiosity and caution, Jane reached down and swiped at her omni-tool, leaving the screen blank on her side of the call. “I wondered how long it would take before you cracked it.” She was grinning, relishing the opportunity to speak to an old acquaintance, someone who knew her and not Ashley Cooke. Liara was going to shit kittens.

“Shepard?” Her heart sank into her stomach. “Shepard?” She knew the voice, an instant recognition snapping her eyes open.

She put a hand over her mouth, “Who gave you--” Twenty different thoughts blossomed like unruly flowers in her mind. She came to several conclusions at once and, as the seconds ticked by, struggled to make a decision.

“Shepard, _please_. Please, are you there?”

Jane swallowed, “Hello Garrus.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and thank you for reading. Please forgive typos and grammatical errors, I edit this myself and sometimes miss the little things. Thank you again and especially for those who leave comments and kudos.

**-000- Ten Years Ago -000-**

When he came into the apartment it wasn’t what he expected. The lights were neither dimmed to darkness or on full blast. It was neither excessively clean nor messy. The bar was intact and untouched, nothing was broken or misplaced. He found her at the desk in the master bedroom, scanning a document while her computer screen ran past repair details for the Normandy. She was composed and un-rumpled, glancing up at him with a small smile.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Garrus shuffled into the room, scratching the back of his neck.

“Just going over logistics. Let me shut it off.”

“I, uh, I brought booze.” While working for Cerberus Garrus and Jane began to bond over more than just the Mako and well-maintained firearms. It started one night when she invited him to play cards with the engineers. He joked about turian austerity while the whiskey flowed and embarrassed Shepard by the lack of dextro alcohol. When they stopped to resupply she dragged him to a market where the stalls were made of cheap plastic and crowded together in a dirty heap. She bought a bottle of Axis, an established turian spirit, for such a low price he insisted they scan it on the ship in Mordin’s lab to make sure it wouldn’t kill him. He got her a bottle of vodka, something he'd seen fellow human officers order at bars before. It became a tradition between them that he cherished. 

If he wanted time alone with her he’d casually mention buying a new brand of human drink and she’d arrange time for them to do a swap. After Thane’s funeral it was the only way he knew to bring the subject up without bringing the subject up. In the immediate days following Thane’s death Shepard had no time to mourn him. Now, months later, she’d finally been able to hold a service for him. The Normandy crew was handling her with the nervous gingerness of a child holding a glass egg.

Tali had nudged him into action, giving him the flattering and terrifying distinction of being Shepard’s closest confidant. Now that they were in dry dock he had the chance to sit down with her off the ship. The service happened a few days before, he’d been there early to help set up. He hadn’t expected her to break everything back down so quickly and her calm, green eyes were making his nerves jangle. Jane left the desk and they walked to the bar, pouring glasses out for themselves.

He held up the bottle he brought, “This is wine, I think? I’m not really sure. It has some un-prounounceable name. Shampagnee?” She snorted and he chuckled, “I’m butchering it.”

“Champagne. It’s a type of wine. Usually reserved for special occasions--graduations, weddings, that sort of thing.” Shepard loved explaining human cultural nuances to him as much as she did learning about his. She pulled a bottle from below the bar top and handed it to him, “Tell me what this one is. I sort-of read the name. I think it means ‘ground?’”

Garrus guffawed, holding the bottle up in the light, “Oh Spirits, where did you find this?”

“I asked the bartender at Darkstar to recommend something dextro with a kick and she pointed it out to me.”

He uncapped it and sniffed once, his mandibles flapping as he winced. “It’s in standard Palaven. The translation would be something like ‘on the floor.’”

Jane covered her mouth and laughed, “Oh, I see.” She took it from him and took a whiff, “Oh God.” Her face wrinkled and she laughed again, “So this is something you probably ran into while you were a kid in the military?”

“Only if I was on leave and only if I knew my parents wouldn’t be around for the morning after. Spirits.” She grinned at him and Garrus put the cap back on, “So do you have anything else that won’t lay me up for a week?”

“I’ve got some stuff leftover from the memorial,” Jane turned and pulled down two other bottles while Garrus stood stiff and uncertain behind her. “Here, it’s the expensive stuff Tali liked so much.” She paused and her freckled mask slipped; he watched her quiet certainty melt away as she remembered the cups poured out in the name of her dead lover. And then all her precisely constructed normality screamed at him as she cast it away.

He put the bottle down and opened his arms, squeezing her shoulders to his chest and breathing over her hair. Jane didn’t cry, but she took several sobbing gulps of air and buried her nose into his chest and threw her fists at his arms. They stood there, him making soft noises at her, she wailing and tearless, until her knees gave out and she stumbled to the carpet. Garrus spent the night with Jane on the couch, the both of them blind drunk and weepy. It was a night Jane would not forget, although in his memory it would remain a hazy picture of gray words and too many drinks.

 

* * *

 

**-000- The Present (Shortly Before the Call) -000-**

“Who did you call?” Moraina demanded, her face screwed with distrust. They were standing around the high-security evidence locker in C-Sec. After Garrus contacted his teammates about the omni-tool they got alerts about a break-in there.

“A friend,” Garrus shrugged.

“A friend who broke into C-Sec HQ and tampered with evidence?” Her hands spread in the air and her nostrils flared.

“Novani, calm down. Vakarian wouldn’t involve anyone who would compromise us.” Kaidan said with a flinty expression over crossed arms and whitened knuckles. "Would you?"

Garrus lowered his voice at them, “Look, my contact wasn’t supposed to break in. I didn’t anticipate that and I accept the blame for bringing in a reckless element.”

“We have to report to Vilus.” Moraina dragged a hand over her face, “She’s going to ream us for this.”

“It’s my fault, I’ll take responsibility for it.”

“She’ll be fine if there are results.” Kaidan’s gaze fell onto the omni-tool, “What are we going to do with this?”

Moraina glowered, “We call the line.”

“Agreed. We should do it now.” Garrus nodded.

Kaidan ran his fingers through his hair, “Now? Do we want to try and investigate this more or--”

“Alenko, this is our only good lead in months.”

“And we don’t know if it’s authentic yet. Our people haven’t even looked at it properly yet. What if T’Loak is lying? She’s literally a crime baron. Why would she help us?”

“You haven’t met Aria,” Garrus said. “She wants Shepard back. I saw it in her eyes and heard it in her voice. She wants us to succeed.”

“This is just--”

“If it’s a dud, it’s a dud. We won’t know until we try.” Moraina was already moving toward the omni-tool, her eyes locked on it. “If it’ll make you feel better only one of us will dedicate time to it while the other two focus on different leads like we were planning.”

Kaidan’s face was long with weariness; he closed his eyes and breathed. “All right. Let’s see where this thing goes.”

Moraina’s hands were on the Savant but she turned to Garrus and her lips turned down. “You do it.”

 

Garrus didn’t hesitate, he stepped up to the omni-tool and slipped his off. The Savant lit up on his wrist and a screen popped up. It was simple and blank with only one command program available, which was the call function. He went to the default menu where the list of contacts had a single entry labeled EMERGENCIES ONLY. There was a dull roar in his ears that he vaguely recognized as the pounding of his heart. He selected the contact and the omni-tool brought up a blue waiting screen with a small, rotating ring of light. It was the same shade as turian blood and the effect made his stomach roll.

The line rang once, then twice, then a third time. The three of them stood, their heads all tilted forward, bodies traced by rigid lines and stiff mouths. It rang ten times when Kaidan, gray in the face, said, “Turn it off.”

But Garrus was too rapt on the circling light to listen. He was poised like a falcon on the fist of its handler, waiting to tear into the sky. It rang an eleventh time, then a twelfth; before Kaidan could move to bash the ringing into silence, the line connected. Three breaths of air gasped in the room. A gray icon shaped like the head and shoulders of a person appeared and the voice issuing out was warm and full of secret laughter: “I wondered how long it would take before you cracked it.”

He felt his lungs deflate, and a pain in his gut like a gunshot. She’d been waiting for him? His brain immediately snapped back to attention--no, idiot. She probably thought it was Aria. Garrus gathered his voice, trying to keep the trembling from shaking his words. “Shepard?” There was a long pause and guilt washed over him; had he startled her? Was she angry it was him calling? “Shepard?” He asked again, more plaintive, a soft supplication in his question.

“Who gave you--” Her voice was a blast of ice, loud and sent shivers up his back. She fell silent again and the quiet stretched on, filling the room with its absence.

Garrus was frozen; a hand touched his shoulder and he fought against every instinct in his body to strike out at it. It was Moraina and she was motioning with her other hand, eyes wide and wondering. He straightened, “Shepard, please. Please, are you there?”

There was another long pause that kept them all trapped in its void. Then, at last, a soft answer: “Hello, Garrus.”

He felt the breath return to his lungs, his tongue no longer felt numb. “Shepard, Spirits, it’s you.” Kaidan was staring at him with a deadened kind of panic. He tried to convey reassurance with his eyes but everything unfolding around him made his friend’s crises shrink in comparison. Garrus rested a hand on his forehead, “Shepard--I don’t--where have you been?” Some anger was creeping into his tone, the shock wearing away. “Where are you _now?_ ”

“Aria gave you my omni-tool?”

“Yes. She wanted us to find you. I--Shepard, it’s been years.”

There was a beat, “I know. I didn’t mean to be away this long.”

He felt the stabbing in his gut again, “Then what the hell have you been doing?” The words exploded from his lips, rage twining with disbelief and hurt.

“I’ve been hiding.” Jane’s answer was firm, but the sadness in it made him pause.

“What do you mean? Are you in danger?”

“Probably I'm--yes. Liara’s been keeping me under wraps while she tries to figure things out.” The honesty was a blow to the head, but it was altogether like Jane. “I didn’t plan for this to happen. I was only taking a year or two off, I mean that. Then Liara and I had a talk.” A short pause, “It was a long talk. She told me about patterns she noticed, troublesome ones. I realized what she was telling me and I knew I couldn’t just--I knew I had to trust her.” As she stumbled over her words, Garrus was considering everything she told him. What was this impending danger?

Garrus' emotions were cooling and now his brain was puzzling over this new information. He looked at Kaidan, who still stood, pained and silent, trapped in his own thoughts. Moraina was hanging off his shoulder, her face youthful with curiosity. “We still need to find her.” The whisper was so slight he almost didn’t hear it. His throat constricted, wondering how long Shepard would tolerate his questioning.

“Shepard, is hiding like this helping? If it’s been six years--”

“I’ve been asking myself that too. But I can’t take this lightly. All I can say is you need to be careful.”

“Of what?”

There was a small noise, and after a moment she answered, “Remember Dr. Bryson?”

The name made his brow plates rise, “Bryson? What are you saying?”

“I can’t talk about it. I’m worried though. Why did you start looking for me? Who started this investigation?”

“The Council did; well, one Councilor in particular. Lorn Vilus assigned me to it with a few other spectres. She’s got partial support from the rest of the Council. What are you bringing Bryson up for?”

“Are you alone? Who are the spectres you’re working with?”

“They’re with me now. Kaidan’s here and the other is Moraina Novani.”

“Kaidan? He’s in the room with you?” The sound of his name made Kaidan lurch forward, his arms strapped to his chest.

“Shepard.”

“Kaidan,” they heard her chuckle. “That was a bit stiff.”

“I didn’t--it’s good to hear your voice again.”

“It’s good to hear yours. So who is Moraina Novani?”

“Me,” Moraina answered. “I’ve been a spectre since before you were, Admiral.”

“I see, good to know there’s still some pre-war spectres working for the Council.” For a moment Jane fell quiet. There was a soft snort of air, “I remember your name now. It turned up in some reports on my desk during the war. You were assigned to scouting colonies that’d gone dark.”

“That’s right.”

“Grim work. Thank you for doing it.”

“I was carrying out my duties, nothing more.” Moraina’s eyes turned glassy. “Admiral, I have to say, whatever it is you’re hiding from, you could do better than total isolation. You seemed like a woman of action to me, I find it surprising you’ve let yourself stay in the shadows for so long.”

“No more than I am. I don’t enjoy it, but it's necessary. So for now I’m staying away.”

“And where is that, Shepard?” Garrus leaned in to the screen, thinking of the photograph of her surrounded by cacti.

Jane considered her answer before she finally spoke: “I can’t tell you. But I’ll give you this: if you manage to find me I’ll go with you.”

“Shepard--”

“No, I can’t just leave. You being on an investigation to find me--I need to know what spurred it.” He could see her tapping her chin, eyes screwed with busy thoughts. “If the Council is looking for me that means something is about to happen. Or already has. I just can’t tell yet if it’s related to my problems or not.”

He could feel an end to the conversation looming and some animal instinct inside of him scrabbled madly to keep her from leaving. “Work with our operation then! Even if you don’t want to come out of hiding--we can pool our knowledge and stop whatever it is Liara warned you about. We both know that a team is always more effective than a single person.”

“You’re right. But I need to know more.”

“Shepard, don’t hang up--look, I know you want to keep everyone safe, but this is insane. Your friends and family want you back. I spoke to your mother, she says you haven’t had contact with her for over a year. Don’t do keep doing this to us.” He let the desperation and finality seep into his words, heard the intake of her breath over the line. He felt maudlin and pathetic; his throat bobbed as he swallowed several times, gulping at the sharp lump stuck there.

It was a long time before her answer came, “I’m so sorry.” A second silence followed and he panicked.

“Don’t hang up--Shepard!”

“I’m not, I’m not. Sorry. I’m not trying to be dramatic.” The chuckle that echoed after was hollow sounding while he sighed, shoulders relaxing at the sound of her voice. “I wouldn’t hang up in the middle of a call without saying goodbye. You don’t think I’ve turned into that much of an ass, do you?”

“It’s been a long time. We’re all worried.” He looked at Kaidan, who shook his head. Moraina was listening with a pinched frown but her thoughts were unreadable.

“Listen, I can’t come back yet. Our conversation? This is a rude wake up. I was letting other people take charge of my own problems because I was scared. But if the Council is looking for me then I need to scrape my ass off the sidelines and get back into it. I’m done with hiding, I promise, but it’s going to be a while longer before I dig myself out of this mess. Please trust me, I didn’t mean for this to happen. For all of you to worry.”

Garrus exchanged glances with Kaidan, “What are you scared of, Shepard?”

She snorted, “Of all the usual things. Usual for me, at least.” There was a pause, and when she spoke there was a waver in her voice he had not heard since her eulogy at Thane’s funeral, “I am very afraid of losing myself, Garrus. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“We’re not going to stop.” Garrus’ mandibles went tight against his jaws and an icy certainty filled him.

“I know. Please be careful, remember what I said about Bryson. Don’t contact Anne. She’s had enough of this bullshit. And please don’t go spreading it around if you start asking questions. It’s still not declassified, by the Council or the Alliance. I’d prefer it to stay that way.”

“Shepard, you’re being cryptic.” He rubbed one of his eyes.

“I am, I’m sorry. But I’ve got a good reason to be paranoid. How about this: I’ll call you again and set up designated times for you to contact me. You’re not going to be able to trace me, so don’t try. But I’ll talk to you and Kaidan.”

“Just Alenko and Vakarian?” Moraina cut in.

“Just them. I apologize, but I don’t know you.”

Her blue face narrowed but Novani shrugged, “I can understand the hesitation. Please share as much as you can with them. Your history with the Council hasn’t been an easy one, but you can trust us. We want to find you, to help you.”

“Thank you, those are kind words.” Jane went warm and reassuring, her diplomat’s voice. He could see her in the window of his mind in her Alliance blues--the stripes and accolades worn right on her breast. Shaking hands with a turian official, charming a jaded dalatrass with her frankness, forcing an issue in just the right way to finish her work and damn their approval. How had she not ended up in charge of everything?

Kaidan was still hovering nearby, a tired bitterness painted on his mouth. Garrus wondered if he looked too happy and tried to school his face into a proper somberness. In spite of his anxiety and anger, he could not stop the happiness bubbling up inside his chest like a well of cold, sweet water. She was alive, she was out there and he only needed to find her. His best friend and commander, a person he’d trust anything to. Her warnings were sobering but a tiny part of him could not help thinking with a childish glee that once they found her she’d come back and make everything better again.

Kaidan, meanwhile, was sullen and silent. Hearing Jane’s voice made him shiver quietly in the corner. It was not the reaction Garrus expected, but it didn’t surprise him either. He’d forgiven her, all those years ago, for going over to Cerberus. He’d gotten past their first break up, and then their second. He’d sacrificed his own convictions to trust her instincts--more than once as Garrus found out over many late night mugs of beer. But he had never forgiven her for dying. With the divorce looming and the investigation eating up his life it was not a stretch to imagine Kaidan had lately been brooding over women who abandoned him.

“Garrus,” Jane’s voice interrupted his musing. “Give me two standard days. I promise I’ll call exactly in two days.”

He shook away his thoughts, “Are you really going to, Shepard?”

“Yes, I promise. I’d tell you if I didn’t want to talk, Vakarian.” The jovial timbre of her voice wasn’t convincing.

“We’ll be waiting for it,” his mouth and tongue formed the words but his brain was pleading, _I’ll be waiting for it_.

“I promise, Garrus. Goodbye.” Her reply was quieter, a low breath of impossible air that brushed him across the face and made him exhale loudly. When the call ended he felt deflated, sagging against the evidence countertop with weak knees. It took almost a full three minutes before any of them gathered themselves enough to talk--and then a furious debate descended on their trio that went on for the next two hours.

 

* * *

 

Jane put a hand on her chest, her heart sat in its palm, beating with a terrified excitement. She glanced around the restaurant again, wondering if she’d outed herself to a few crusty locals. But no one was eyeing her and she slid her gaze to the congealing plate of food left on the table. After a couple measured breaths she stood up from her booth and slipped out of the small cafe. Her steps were quick and stumbling, a drunken patter that took her all the way back to the shuttle station.

There was a joyous bubble sitting on her shoulders she was afraid would pop as soon as she stopped and let other thoughts sink in. So for the entire flight she let staccato phrases rattle around her brain in a loop of happy chatter: _Garrus, it was Garrus! He found me, he and Kaidan found me!_ It was not until she was waiting for her next flight to Intai’sei that Jane’s high began to fade.

She brushed the hanging bangs from her eyes and steepled her fingers, covering her lips while her eyes deepened with thought. The Council’s interest in her whereabouts was not a new development, an active effort to find her was. It was not surprising they would be divided on the matter either. But who was Lorn Vilus and why had she decided Shepard was a priority? She read up on the salarian councilor’s latest activities and policies on her second shuttle ride, trying to remember if she’d ever met the woman in person.

Vilus was nominated as a councilor five years ago. She was twenty at the time and one of the youngest, salarian Councilors ever appointed. Jane had nothing to do with her instalment but paused long enough to comment to the media that she approved of Vilus’ open-minded approach to the krogan influence proliferating new politics formed after the war. Other memories flickered; she flipped through a series of neat files in a library kept in her head.

A dinner function tipped forward--blue fruit and tinkling champagne glasses that twisted in the hand like a flower between the fingers. Squirming in formal wear, wishing for her black, leather dress instead of the floor-length monstrosity Miranda bought for her. Teaching Garrus, then Ambassador Vakarian, to dance a waltz; laughing when he twirled her like a professional. Tali in ceremonial admiral’s garb, giggling at their table over her drink; Bakara resplendent in a strange, silken armor that made her as splendid as a queen. Hackett looking gray and handsome in a suit, the years worn into his face but carried well. It was on Sur’kesh--no, Thessia. The asari were determined to maintain their position of influence in spite of Reaper devastation.

Representatives of all the remaining governments were invited: turian, salarian, human, elcor, hannar, volus, quarian, and krogan. Her invitation came with Hackett’s and she reviewed the inclusiveness of the guest list before agreeing to go. She was reserved about the formalities preceding the talks, which she half-enjoyed for the gift of being able to share a good meal and conversation with her friends. It was a long and hard day after that bubbly dinner; self-preservation and old prejudices dredged up ugly demands and accusations. But she remembered a few cooler heads--one of them a youngish salarian in a hooded robe with sharp, red eyes and a contempt for the familiar complaints of the other salarian representatives. Lorn Vilus, yes, she’d met her that day.

Her eyes screwed shut trying to recall if they’d shared a conversation, but nothing came. She gave up and skimmed the articles on her omni-tool once more. They left the impression of a woman with strong convictions who stepped over, and sometimes on, her peers while pursuing her agenda. Luckily, it seemed this agenda was one that maintained an interest in opening the salarian government to changes and growth their people had not seen for centuries. This did not lessen the kinks twisting in Jane’s gut.

She had to take a third, smaller ship to get back to Intai’sei, which was far enough off the radar of the major space routes that you had to charter a ride onto its surface. Her personal vehicle was waiting, pre-programmed to chauffeur her home. Already changed back into civvies, Jane told her townie friends a lively bunch of retired vets kept her going off-planet for dinners and drinks. It was midday on the little dust bowl planet and she waved at a few people on the street while she climbed into the car. Fatigue had slapped her in the face and she sank into the driver’s seat with a long groan.

Her old wounds were pulsing quietly, a gentle reminder that _you’re getting older, sweetheart_. She slipped into a slumber deep and silent as the yawning night sky.

 

* * *

 

Liara rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes, which were swollen and dark from lack of sleep. When tears began to well up and run down her face it was a relief to the aching dryness of her corneas. The signs were discouraging, everything confirmed what she suspected but was not enough to provide a strategy of action. There were no easy solutions, not ones without putting her friends in danger. She could not allow that, she could not fail to protect Shepard again. To rely on other people to protect the woman she loved.

Feron was worried; Liara looked ill and her grip on daily interactions was shrinking. Information was coming in, slowly; her agents brought scattered reports of shadowy movements on the periphery of Council Space and infiltrations of its core organizations. Barla Von had planted false information into the investigation but had not come back with anything that pointed to what direction the spectres took in their search. Everything she wanted to know was coming in crumb by crumb. The sensation of helplessness was not unfamiliar, it was only more frustrating surrounded by her vast reserve of wealth and resources.

One of her agents sent to shadow Shepard, known only to them by her alias, reported today that Ashley Cooke had received a call after capturing a bounty off-planet which distressed her. The agent was not human, and was unable to read her lips. More irritating was that Shepard sat with her back to the small security feed the cafe installed--an easy target for the Shadow Broker’s people. Liara suspected she did it purposely. A drawn-out sigh rattled her frame; she was being paranoid. It was not difficult to be, she had lately been employing her assassins at a frequent rate.

“Agent Pix has been dealt with, miss.” One of her Glyph drones hovered near her elbow.

“Thank you Glyph. Make sure her family is appropriately compensated.” A kill order was put out on Pix’s head when Liara learned she was compromised. It was not how she liked to run her organization; the decade spent acting as the Shadow Broker made her aware, cruelly aware, of the burden of power. How many other nights would she pace like this in her room, counting the lives of people she commanded?

The blue light of the screens was like walking underwater, and her head swam a little as she went over another slew of dispatches while newsfeeds rolled on another monitor, ignoring the headache burning her temples. A terrorist attack perpetrated by batarian extremists claiming to be the racial superiors of Khar’shan had killed almost forty people on a shuttle leaving their home planet. The asari matriarchs were meeting on Illium to discuss current trade policies with the Vol Protectorate. The krogan were in a minor territory dispute with the hannar regarding a moon and the Alliance was requested to send an intermediary to smooth matters over. A small contingent of vorcha mercenaries had formed a guild and were now giving the Blood Pack stiff competition as the galaxy’s best muscle for hire.

Counter facts ran in her head alongside the scrolling news: the terrorists were puppets of a larger organization that was bent on putting a former batarian general back in power. The matriarchs were trying to undercut the volus in their current trade deals and the meeting was actually about a few underhanded threats the Protectorate had made about it. The krogan representatives to the talk over the disputed moon were on probation after the first day for headbutting a hannar ambassador. The vorcha guild was secretly funded by the Blue Suns, who were looking to undermine one of their chief rivals.

“Will you require a follow-up on Ashley Cooke? It is almost a month since Agent Feron’s last visit.” She glanced at the second Glyph floating above her shoulder.

“Please inform him he will be observing her for four days before making his presence known. I will need detailed reports on what she’s been up to.”

“Of course, miss. It will be done immediately.” The one at her elbow flashed.

“Please also send my father a message: I’m doing well and I hope we can meet some time in the future to speak more about my half-sisters. I’m currently very busy with work and I send all my love.”

The Glyph over her shoulder blinked in question, “It is done. What else can I assist you with?”

“Dinner, whatever we have available on the ship. And send a message to our contact among the matriarchs regarding the trade talks requesting more detailed information.” She rubbed her eyes again, “And order another sweep of the agents monitoring Lovecraft. I want anyone who might be compromised rooted out and quietly removed.”

Both Glyphs dipped in acquiescence, “As you wish, miss.”

 

* * *

 

A cup of coffee steamed in one hand while Jane reclined on her sofa and the sun rose. She let the warm, orange light sink in and the scent of coffee stir her tired brain. Despite a rising desire to scream her chest rose and fell in a precise breathing pattern. It was a meditation exercise taught to Alliance trainees. Sometimes on old missions she’d catch Kaidan with his eyes glazed, powering up his barrier and breathing in tandem. During the war this was how she began every day.

Ten minutes passed while her heart beat and air exhaled through her parted lips. Jane lifted the mug and sipped, wincing at the heat. Her thoughts unrolled like a map and she considered her options. Liara was, for the moment, unaware of her recent communications with Garrus and Kaidan. Tomorrow she planned to call them back, as promised. After that she was leaving Intai’sei. The choice looming largest was whether or not she was willing to work with her friend or alone.

If she contacted Liara she would have deep pools of resources and information; if she went rogue she would have mobility and freedom. She took another sip; her personal finances were less grandiose than the Shadow Broker’s but still ample. The difficulty would be how to access them without alerting T’soni. Her mouth curled, hacking her own accounts wouldn’t be impossible to cover up. It would take time, however, to set up a false trail. Jane was looking at a few weeks of preparation just for funding.

Transport was another problem--it was impossible to move around the galaxy in an unregistered ship unless you were willing to go pirate. It might be easier once she was off-planet, but any shuttle leaving Intai’sei could be tracked. Jane needed to smuggle herself to a major travel hub, somewhere she could buy or commandeer a ship under fraudulent registration. She’d already put a plan in place for this situation, but it went belly-up once Aria surrendered her bug-out supplies to Garrus and Kaidan. There was one other she hid on Illium, but it was worth the extra time to be careful. Rushing into asari space would wave red flags all across the galaxy. Her emergency kits weren’t meant for the slow, well-planned escape she had in mind.  

She stood up and left the half-full mug on the counter of her kitchen. Mining company hours started in forty-five, then she’d get out to her obstacle course before bed. Tomorrow her real work started. While she changed into her mechanic’s jumpsuit she gave a long-eyed stare to the door leading to her little armory.

Jane wondered if she was going to war again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a quick timeline, since this story jumps around quite a bit.
> 
> 10 years ago: Shepard destroys the Reapers----4 years after that: Shepard disappears------Six years later, in the present: Spectre team tasked with finding Shepard-- About two years in the future: the Prologue occurs


End file.
